letter of this mandate, let him lie
under the curse of the All-Mighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter
and Paul."

And besides, adds the chronicle, rather quaintly, of more temporal and
material benefits, the Infant D. Pedro, then Regent of the kingdom, gave
to his brother Henry a charter, granting him the whole of the fifth of
the profits which appertained to the King, and, considering that it was
by him alone that the whole matter of the discovery was carried out at
infinite trouble and expense, he ordered further that no one should go
to those parts without D. Henry's licence and express command.

The chronicle, which has told us how Antam Gonsalvez made the first
captives, now goes on to say how the same one of the Prince's captains
made the first ransom. For the captive chief, "that cavalier of whom we
spoke," Henry's first prize from the lands beyond Bojador, pined away in
Europe, "and many times begged of Antam Gonsalvez that he would take him
back to his own land, where, as he said, they would give for him five or
six blackamoors, and he said, too, that there were two boys among the
other captives for whom they would get a like ransom." So the Infant
sent him back with Gonsalvez to his own people, "as it was better to
save ten souls than three, for though they were black, yet had they
souls like others, all the more as they were not of Moorish race, but
Heathen and so all the easier to lead into the way of salvation. From
the negroes too it would be possible to get news of the land beyond
them. For not only of the Negro land did the Infant wish to know more
certainly, but also of the Indies and of the land of Prester John."

So Gonsalvez sailed with his ransom, and in his ship went a noble
stranger, like Vallarte the Dane, whom we shall meet later on, one of a
kind which was always being drawn to Henry's Court. This was Balthasar
the Austrian, a gentleman of the Emperor's Household, who had entered
the Infant's service to try his fortune at Ceuta, where he had got his
knighthood, and who now "was often heard to say that his great wish was
to see a storm, before he left that land of Portugal, that he might tell
those who had never seen one what it was like.

"And certainly his fortune favoured him. For at the first start, they met
with such a storm that it was by a marvel they escaped destruction."

Again they put out to sea, and this time reached the Rio d'Ouro in
safety, where they landed their chief