God
of his great mercy preserved us.

Before the departure of our ships, a quarrel had taken place between our
people and the Javanese, who sought by all manner of ways to be
revenged; so that presently after the departure of our pinnace, they
began to attempt setting fire to our principal house, by means of
fire-arrows and fire-darts in the night; and when we brought out any
quantity of our goods to air, they were sure to set some part of the
town on fire to windward not far from us. If these fire-arrows had not,
by God's good providence, been seen by some of our people, that house
and all its goods had surely been consumed, as plainly appeared when we
came afterwards to repair the roof. But, as the malice of the rascal
sort began now plainly to appear, and continued for two years against
us, so did the merciful protection of God begin to shew itself, and
continued to the last day, as will manifestly be seen in the sequel of
this discourse: For which blessed be his holy name.

Immediately after dispatching the pinnace, we began to lay the
foundation of our new house, which was seventy-two feet long, and
thirty-six broad. And as at this time a new protector of the kingdom was
chosen, we were put to some trouble and cost before we could get
permission to go through with it. In airing our prize goods, Mr Starkie
unadvisedly caused the leather covers to be stripped off from most of
the bales, by which we found afterwards that they did not keep their
colour near so well as the others. On the 21st of March, in consequence
of a cannon being fired off by a Chinese captain, the town was set on
fire, and many houses full of goods were consumed. Among the rest the
Dutch house was burnt down, in which we had sixty-five packs of goods,
besides some pepper. We had also a considerable quantity of pepper in
the house of a Chinese which was burnt down, in which we lost 190 sacks
entirely, besides damage received by the rest. Our loss by this fire was
great, yet we were thankful to God it was no worse, considering how near
the fire came to our two houses, which were at that time very unfit for
such danger, especially one to which the fire came within three yards,
so that the jambs of the windows were so hot one could hardly lay their
hand upon them, yet did not its old dry thatch take fire, to the great
admiration of all who were there of many nations. All the villains of
the place gathered round our house, so that we durst take no res