But As The Wind Changed To S.W. We Had To Weigh Again, And Go
Over To The South Side Of The Channel, Where We Came To An Anchor Under
A Small Island On That Shore.
We here got fresh water and cocoa-nuts,
but very little other refreshments; yet the natives came off to us in
long canoes that could have carried twenty men in each.
They brought
gums to sell instead of amber, with which they deceived several of our
men; for these eastern people are wholly given to deceit. They brought
also hens and cocoa-nuts for sale; but held them at so dear a rate that
we bought very few. We staid here ten days, putting our ordnance in
order and trimming our ships, that we might be in readiness at our first
port, which we were not now far from.
In the morning of the 20th April, we set sail for Sumatra, but the wind
blew hard at S.S.W. and the current set against us, so that we could not
proceed. While beating up and down, two of our ships sprung leaks, on
which we were forced to go to the island of Sombrero,[108] ten or
twelve leagues north of Nicobar. Here we in the Admiral lost an anchor,
for the ground is foul, and grown full of false coral and some rocks,
which cut our cable asunder, so that we could not recover our anchor.
The people of these islands go entirely naked, except that their parts
are bound up in a piece of cloth, which goes round the waist like a
girdle, and thence between their legs.
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