By This Means I Escaped The Present Danger, And Remained In
Prison 55 Days, With An Iron Of Eighteen Pounds Weight Fastened To My
Legs.
On the second day of my confinement, many Mahometans went in great
rage to the lieutenant to demand that I should be put to death as a
Portuguese spy.
Only a few days before, these men had difficultly
escaped from the hands of the Portuguese by swimming, with the loss of
their foists and barks, and therefore greatly desired to be revenged of
the Christians, outrageously affirming that I was a Portuguese and a
spy. But God assisted me, for the master of the prison made fast its
gates, that these outrageous men might not offer me violence. At the end
of fifty-five days, the sultan sent for me into his presence; so I was
placed on the back of a camel with my shackles, and at the end of eight
days journey I was brought to the city of _Rhada_, where the sultan then
resided, and where he had assembled an army of 30,000 men to make war
upon the sultan of _Sanaa_, a fair and populous city about three days
journey from _Rhada_, situated partly on the slope of a hill and partly
in a plain. When I was brought before the sultan, he asked me what I
was: on which I answered that I was a Roman, and had professed myself a
Mahometan and Mameluke at Babylon in Egypt, or Cairo.
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