to the best of their ability. For the Spaniards could not
abandon the city, while life remained, without loss of their credit;
for in only this one of all the islands thereabout could they feel
secure. This determination was speedily put into execution, the work
lasting during the two days and nights while the pirate delayed; and no
opportunity was neglected, nor was any person excused from the work,
notwithstanding his rank, for the courageous soldiers well knew that,
if they remained alive, the fatigue and weariness would soon pass
away. With this incessant work, they were enabled to make a fort out of
planks, and casks filled with sand, with such other means of defense
as these few hours permitted. They brought out four pieces of very
excellent artillery that were in the city. These were placed in good
position, and all the people were gathered in the little fort thus
made. This occurred, as we believe, through the providence of God,
our Lord, who did not choose that the many souls baptized in those
islands, and sealed with the light of the knowledge of His most holy
faith, should return into the power of the devil, from whose grasp He
had drawn them by His infinite mercy. Neither did He wish that the
convenient proximity of those islands to the great kingdom of China
be lost, by which means, perhaps, his divine Majesty has ordained
the salvation and rescue of all that country. The night before the
assault, Captain Juan de Salcedo, lieutenant-governor of the town of
Fernandina, arrived--who, as we said, was coming for the purpose of
aiding the Spaniards of Manila. His coming and that of his companions
was clearly the chief remedy for both the city and its inhabitants;
for, besides being few, the work of the late resistance and that of
preparing the defenses for the coming assault, together with the fear
left in their hearts by the danger in which they beheld themselves,
had rendered them feeble and in great need of help such as this; and
he seemed to all of them to have been sent miraculously by God. With
this arrival, all recovered courage and the assured hope of making a
courageous resistance. They prepared themselves for this immediately,
because the pirate, before dawn of the morning following--two days
after the assault, as above related, by the four hundred soldiers at
his orders--appeared with his entire fleet in front of the port. He
disembarked about six hundred soldiers, who without delay fell upon
the city,