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The two armies joined battle on the 3d of April, 1367, at Najara or Navarette, not far from the Ebro. Disorder and even sheer rout soon took place amongst that of Henry, who flung himself before the fugitives, shouting, "Why would ye thus desert and betray me, ye who have made me King of Castile? Turn back and stand by me; and by the grace of God the day shall be ours."

Numerous conversions and numerous returns of apostates took place everywhere. While this enthusiasm was at its height, Navarette, vice-provincial of the Dominicans, and Ayala, vice-provincial of the Augustins, emerged from hiding, and robed in their full canonicals, commenced an open propaganda, heralding their approach by a letter addressed to Omura and couched in the most defiant terms.

"Upon my word, I laughed at it as much as the rest," Navarette exclaimed; "I laughed at it with that profound, cruel pitilessness which we all of us, who are well made and vigorous, feel for those whom their step-mother, Nature, has disfigured in some way or other, for those laughable, feeble creatures who are, however, more to be pitied than those poor deformed wretches from whom we turn away in spite of ourselves.

"'After the great battle of Navarette, when Henry of Transtamare had relieved his brother, King Pedro, of the troublesome burden of the crown, "'And likewise of that still more troublesome burden, which is called life, then Don Henry's victorious magnanimity had to deal with his brother's children. "'He has adopted them, as an uncle should; and he has given them free quarters in his own castle.

Thus the measures adopted against the missionaries are seen to have gradually increased in severity. The first two fathers put to death, De l'Assumpcion and Machado, were beheaded in 1617, not by the common executioner but by one of the principal officers of the daimyo. The next two, Navarette and Ayala, were decapitated by the executioner.

These blew half a gale of wind at the time of the landfall; yet Navarette, Varnhagen, and Captain Becher anchored the squadron on the windward sides of the coral reefs of their respective islands, a "lee shore." The absence of permanent lagoons at Samana I have tried to explain. Second.