heir smuggling, as they themselves told us. The Roman
Catholics, as they declared, looked upon us as priests; the
Mennonists, as a class of their exhorters; and the ordinary Reformed,
as preachers; whereby they all showed they did not know us in truth,
according to the word in Christ Jesus.

[Footnote 60: West Friesland was the ancient name for the northern
part of the province of Holland, Alkmaar one of its chief towns.]

Leaving Texel and the land we came outside the coast, laying our
course S.W. with a S.E. wind, with which we sailed some distance from
the shore. Towards evening the wind began to blow from the S. and
S.S.W. quite hard, and so we stood off through the whole night. I do
not know that I ever had in my life so severe a pain in the breast as
I had this evening, whether it was from hard work or change of our
condition.

_27th, Tuesday._ The wind from the same quarter as before, but blowing
harder, for which reason we reefed our topsails. We had twenty-six and
twenty-eight fathoms of water. By evening it was somewhat calmer; but
as the wind was not steady we stood off from the shore.

_28th, Wednesday._ Finding ourselves in twenty-five and twenty-six
fathoms of water and the wind still south and southwest we sailed over
by the wind. It continued to blow hard, and we sailed for the most
part N. by E. and N.N.E. It annoyed me that I could not get at our
chest, in order to obtain my charts and books of navigation. Our mate
and others observed the latitude, and found it to be 52 deg. 16'; and we
tacked about. The wind continued in the same quarter, sometimes a
little lighter, sometimes sharper. We kept mostly a S.S.E. course,
with hard weather the first part of the night.

_29th, Thursday._ Having twenty-six and twenty-seven fathoms of water
we lay over again. Every day there were many mackerel caught, which
for several days were for the cabin only, whatever number were caught,
because they were taken with the captain's hooks; but the passengers
and sailors began to get their hooks ready also and thus every one
began to catch and eat. The weather was delightful. I had obtained my
things out of the chest, and found the latitude 52 deg. 18' [?]. We stood
over to the Flemish or Zeelandish coast, calculating we were not far
from Sluis and Bruges. I therefore went aloft frequently to look out
for land. We saw several fishing boats, one of which we hailed toward
evening. He was from Zierickzee, and told us Walch