Adding, If They Dared Either To Brave Or Disgrace Him Or His Countrymen, He Would Either Sink Them Or Sink By Their Sides. There Were Five Ships Of These Hollanders, One Of Which Was Seven Or Eight Hundred Tons, But All The Rest Much Smaller.

We went and anchored close beside them, but no notice was taken of our general's message; and though the

Hollanders were wont to swagger and make a great stir on shore, they were so quiet all the time we lay there, that we hardly ever saw one of them on land.

We took leave of our countrymen, and departed from Bantam on the 2d of November, shaping our course for Patane. While on our way between the Chersonesus of Malacca and Piedra branca, we met with three praws, which being afraid of us, anchored so close to the shore that we could not come near them, either in our ship or pinnace. Our general therefore manned the shallop with eighteen of us, and sent us to request that he might have a pilot for money, to carry his ship to Pulo Timaon, which is about five days sail from where we met them. But, as they saw that our ship and pinnace were at anchor a mile from them, and could not come near, they told us flatly that none of them would go with us, and immediately weighed anchor to go away. We therefore began to fight them all three, and took one of them in less than, half an hour, all her men, to the number of seventy-three, getting ashore. Another fought with us all night, but yielded about break of day next morning, our general having joined us in his skiff a little while before she yielded. They were laden with benzoin, storax, pepper, china dishes, and pitch. The third praw got away while we were fighting the other. Our general would not allow any thing to be taken out of them, because they belonged to Java, except two of their men to pilot us to Pulo Timaon. The people of Java are very resolute in a desperate case. Their principal weapons are javelins, darts, daggers, and a kind of poisoned arrows which they blow from trunks or tubes. They have likewise some arquebusses, but are by no means expert in using these; they use also targets, and most of them are Mahometans. They had been at Palimbangan, and were on their way back to Grist, a port town on the north-east coast of Java, to which place they belonged.

The 12th November we dismissed them, pursuing our course for Patane. The 26th we saw certain islands to the N.W. of us, which neither we nor our pilots knew; but, having a contrary wind for Patane, we thought it necessary to search these islands for wood and water, hoping to have a better wind by the time we had watered. The 27th we came to anchor within a mile of the shore, in sixteen fathoms, on good ground, on the south side of these islands.

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