reat stir on
shore, they were so quiet all the time we lay there, that we hardly ever
saw one of them on land.

We took leave of our countrymen, and departed from Bantam on the 2d of
November, shaping our course for Patane. While on our way between the
Chersonesus of Malacca and _Piedra branca_, we met with three praws,
which being afraid of us, anchored so close to the shore that we could
not come near them, either in our ship or pinnace. Our general therefore
manned the shallop with eighteen of us, and sent us to request that he
might have a pilot for money, to carry his ship to Pulo Timaon, which is
about five days sail from where we met them. But, as they saw that our
ship and pinnace were at anchor a mile from them, and could not come
near, they told us flatly that none of them would go with us, and
immediately weighed anchor to go away. We therefore began to fight them
all three, and took one of them in less than, half an hour, all her
men, to the number of seventy-three, getting ashore. Another fought with
us all night, but yielded about break of day next morning, our general
having joined us in his skiff a little while before she yielded. They
were laden with benzoin, storax, pepper, china dishes, and pitch. The
third praw got away while we were fighting the other. Our general would
not allow any thing to be taken out of them, because they belonged to
Java, except two of their men to pilot us to Pulo Timaon. The people of
Java are very resolute in a desperate case. Their principal weapons are
javelins, darts, daggers, and a kind of poisoned arrows which they blow
from trunks or tubes. They have likewise some arquebusses, but are by no
means expert in using these; they use also targets, and most of them are
Mahometans. They had been at _Palimbangan_, and were on their way back
to _Grist_, a port town on the north-east coast of Java, to which place
they belonged.

The 12th November we dismissed them, pursuing our course for Patane. The
26th we saw certain islands to the N.W. of us, which neither we nor our
pilots knew; but, having a contrary wind for Patane, we thought it
necessary to search these islands for wood and water, hoping to have a
better wind by the time we had watered. The 27th we came to anchor
within a mile of the shore, in sixteen fathoms, on good ground, on the
south side of these islands. Sending our boat on shore, we found some of
them sunken islands, having nothing above water but the trees or