necessity they had of succour, the less they found
from the people of the island.

At the first report which came to Xavier of this pestilence, he left all
things to relieve them; and it is scarce to be imagined, to what actions
his charity led him on this occasion. He was day and night in a continual
motion, at the same time administering to their bodies and their souls;
assisting the dying, burying the dead, and interring them even with his
own hands. As the sick bad neither food nor physic, he procured both for
them from every side; and he who furnished him the most, was a
Portuguese, called John d'Araus, who came in his company from Malacca to
Amboyna. Nevertheless the malady still increasing day by day, Araus
began to fear he should impoverish himself by these charities; and from a
tender-hearted man, became so hard, that nothing more was to be squeezed
out of him. One day Xavier sent to him for some wine, for a sick man who
had continual faintings: Araus gave it, but with great reluctance, and
charged the messenger to trouble him no more; that he had need of the
remainder for his own use; and when his own was at an end, whither should
he go for a supply? These words were no sooner related to Father Francis,
than inflamed with a holy indignation, "What," says he, "does Araus think
of keeping his wine for himself, and refusing it to the members of Jesus
Christ! the end of his life is very near, and after his death all his
estate shall be distributed amongst the poor." He denounced death to him
with his own mouth; and the event verified the prediction, as the sequel
will make manifest.

Though the pestilence was not wholly ceased, and many sick were yet
aboard the vessels, the Spanish fleet set sail for Goa, forced to it by
the approach of winter, which begins about May in those quarters. Father
Xavier made provisions for the necessities of the soldiers, and furnished
them, before their departure, with all he could obtain from the charity
of the Portuguese. He recommended them likewise to the charity of his
friends at Malacca, where the navy was to touch; and wrote to Father Paul
de Camerine at Goa, that he should not fail to lodge in the college of
the company, those religious of the order of St Augustin, who came along
with the army from Mexico, and that he should do them all the good
offices, which their profession, and their virtue, claimed from him.

After the Spaniards were departed, Xavier made some little v