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. Twenty of the foysts or
large barks were chained together, as a floating battery to assault the
caravel; besides which, there were fifty-three _catures_ and thirty large
barks, each of which carried sixteen men and one piece of ordnance,
besides other weapons.
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