yed more than three
months at that place refitting, stepping a mast and replacing the
rudder, and getting food in Macan. They bought a patache, of which
they had great need. On the eighteenth of February the two galleons
and patache sailed out to pursue their voyage. The latter was sent
by the commander, Don Juan Alcarazo, to take its station in the bay
of the kingdom of Tonquin and Cochinchina, in order to await a ship
from Siam of which it should make a prize; and then to go with it in
search of the two galleons. The fact is that they had an order from
Governor Don Juan Nino de Tabora to capture all the Siamese vessels
for reprisal, inasmuch as five years ago a ship was taken from us
in that kingdom, although it was friendly to us. The ship was said
to be valued at one million in merchandise, and was on its way from
Macan to Manila. Several Spaniards were killed. An embassy having been
sent under Father Pedro de Morejon, as I wrote in another relation,
the Siamese returned to us only the value of ten thousand pesos.

That patache, whose captain was Diego Lopez Lobo, a Portuguese, and
which carried thirty Spaniards, waited two months in the said place,
sailing about hither and thither. When the king of Cochinchina saw
it, fearing lest it capture some vessels that he was expecting in his
kingdom, he sent a father of the Society (one of those who reside in
his court and other places, who I think are sixteen in number) in a
small ship to tell the captain not to do any harm to anything belonging
to his kingdom, and that he had always been a friend to us. Answer
was returned that the presence of the ship in that region was not
to do harm to Cochinchina, but to attain certain purposes which his
captain-general had ordered him. Finally, on Thursday, the twentieth
of April, a great freight ship was sighted, one of the sort that sail
these seas. The Spaniards attacked it, and although its occupants
tried to defend themselves, they were obliged to see that they had
no defense against our artillery and musketry. They surrendered, and
it was found to be the ship which was being sought. It was one which
the king of Siam sends every year to Canton with some tribute for the
king of China. It was returning with great wealth of silks and other
things, and carried sixty Siamese and sixty Chinese. Half of the men
were placed aboard our patache, and soldiers were transferred from
the patache to the said Siamese ship. The strict vigilance