Early Next Morning, Pacheco Made A Short Speech To His Men, Exhorting Them, To Behave Valiantly For The Glory Of

The Christian name and the honour of their country, and promising them an assured victory with the assistance of God;

By which their fame would be so established among the natives that they would be feared and respected ever after. He likewise set before them the rewards they might assuredly expect from their own sovereign, if they behaved gallantly on the present occasion. His men immediately answered him that they hoped in the ensuing battle to evince how well they remembered his exhortations. They all then knelt down and sung the _salve regina_, and afterwards an _Ave Maria_, with a loud voice. Just at this time, Laurenco Moreno joined Pacheco with four of his men armed with calivers, who were all anxious to be present in the battle, and of whose arrival the general was extremely glad, as he knew them to be valiant soldiers.

In the course of the night, by the advice of the Italian lapidaries who had deserted to the enemy, the zamorin caused a sconce or battery to be erected directly over against the place where Pacheco was stationed, on which five pieces of ordnance were placed, from which great service was expected in the ensuing battle, owing to the narrowness of the pass. On the morning of Palm Sunday, the zamorin marched forwards with 47,000 men, partly naires and part Moors, and accompanied by all the rajahs and caymals who had joined him in this war. Of these, the rajah of _Tanor_ had 4000 naires; the rajahs of _Bybur_ and _Curran_, whose countries lay near the mountains of Narsinga, had 12,000 naires; the rajah of _Cotogataco_, which is between Cochin and Cananor close beside the mountains, had 18,000 naires; the rajah of _Curia_, which is between Paniani and Cranganor, had 3000 naires. Naubea Daring, the prince of Calicut, and his brother Namboa, who were particularly attached to that part of the army composed of the zamorins immediate subjects, had a large body of men whose numbers I do not particularize. Their warlike instruments were many and of divers sorts, and made a noise as if heaven and earth were coming together.

Before day, the van of this prodigious army arrived at the sconce of the Italians, and began immediately to play off their ordnance against the caravel, which was so near that it was an absolute miracle that not a single shot did any harm. But our cannon were better served, and every shot did execution among the enemy: and so well did they ply their guns, that before sunrise above thirty discharges were made from our caravel. At day-break, the whole of the enemies fleet, consisting of 169 barks, came out of the rivers of the island of Repelim to attack our small force. Sixty-six of these were paraws, having their sides defended with bags of cotton by advice of the Italians, to ward off our shot; and each of these had twenty-five men and two pieces of ordnance, five of the men in each paraw being armed with calivers or matchlocks.

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