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This was the time of the S.E. Monsoon, which made Weather and Wind very uncertain. May 25th we fell in with a parcel of Islands to the Eastward of Bouton, an island where there is a kind of Indian King, very Savage and Warlike, and with a considerable flotilla of Galleys.
Sixty-eight Venetian galleys were burnt, and seven thousand prisoners were haled off to Genoa, among them Marco Polo, who had now a taste of the results of that enterprise, manliness, and warfare, whose absence he so deprecated in the men of Suchow.
As in those days, when vessels could with difficulty keep the sea in a storm, and in the event of a gale springing up were forced to run before it, it was by no means unusual for galleys to be blown into hostile ports, the announcement excited no great surprise. "Who commands the party?" the Roman officer asked. "I do," Malchus replied.
To resume; that afternoon their host Don Antonio Moreno and his two friends, with Don Quixote and Sancho, went to the galleys. The commandant had been already made aware of his good fortune in seeing two such famous persons as Don Quixote and Sancho, and the instant they came to the shore all the galleys struck their awnings and the clarions rang out.
It was a great gain, however; two guns were mounted on it, and all the Turkish artillery, including that of the galleys, began to play on the hapless fort. It was no question of a breach; the walls were gradually destroyed till there was nothing left of the enceinte but a mass of ruins.
Of us there were now but five ships, the rest having been lost in storms, or fallen behind because all their crews were dead from the scurvy; and of the strangers there were three fine ships, and three galleys of many oars apiece. They were clean and bright and black; our ships were storm-ragged and weather-worn, and had bottoms that were foul with trailing ocean weed.
The orders have been all issued, and you may rely upon it that we are going to sea." "And when will you return?" "That's another matter altogether," Francis laughed. "It may be a week, it may be three months." "But I thought we were going to fight the Genoese galleys. It does not seem to me that a week is wanted to do that. A day to go to Chioggia, a day to fight, and a day to return.
Aldegonde, indeed, as soon as the explosion of the mine was heard in the town, had sent out several galleys in the direction of the bridge, with orders to send up fire-balls and rockets the moment they had passed it, and then to sail with the intelligence straight on to Lillo, in order to bring up, without delay, the Zealand fleet, which had orders to co-operate.
On reaching the beach they were disarmed, divided equally between the galleys, and distributed among the rowers, filling up the places of those who had been killed by the fire of the Moslems, and of the men drafted into the prizes.
And that being done we were mounted on stout horses, in company with the other prisoners who had been sentenced to serve in the galleys, and being guarded by a great number of soldiers, well armed, we were sent off across country to the port of Acapulco.
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