on in the ship. At length
twenty-three men landed, armed with muskets, and marched up towards four
or five houses; but had hardly got a musketshot shot from the boats,
when above a thousand Indians fell upon them from an ambush, with such
weapons as they had, and slew them all within our sight. Our boats
waited long, to see if any of our men would return; but seeing no hope
to recover any of them, they returned to the ship with, the sorrowful
news that all who had landed were slain. This was a most lamentable
affair, as we had scarcely as many men remaining as could weigh our
anchor.

We went next day over to the island of St Mary, where we found our
admiral, who had arrived there four days before us, and had departed
from the island of _Mocha_ the day after we came from thence, the
general, master, and all the officers having been _wounded_ on
shore.[51] We were much grieved for our reciprocal misfortunes, so that
the one bemoaned the other, yet were glad that we had come together
again. My good friend Timothy Shotten of London was pilot of this ship.
At this island of St Mary, which is in lat. 37 deg. S, [36 deg. 50'] near the
coast of Chili, it was concluded to take every thing into one of the
ships, and burn the other; but the new captains could not agree which of
the ships to burn, so that this agreement was not executed. Having much
cloth in our ships, it was agreed to steer for Japan, which we
understood was a good market for cloth; and we were the more inclined to
this measure, because the King of Spain's ships upon the coast of Peru
having now intelligence of us, would come in search of us, and knew that
we were weak by the loss of our men, which was all too true, for one of
our ships, as we learnt afterwards, was forced to surrender to the enemy
at St Jago.

[Footnote 51: In the second letter, the general and twenty-seven men are
said to have been _slain_ at Mocha.--E.]

Having procured refreshments at Santa Maria, more by policy than force,
we departed from the road of that island on the 27th November with our
two ships, having heard nothing of the rest of our fleet. We took our
course direct for Japan, and passed the line together, keeping company
till we came into the latitude of 28 deg. N. in which latitude, on the 22d
and 23d of February, we had as heavy a storm of wind as I ever saw,
accompanied with much rain; during which storm we lost sight of our
other and larger ship, being very sorry to be left