long-expected ships entered the port; we were overjoyed, we were
transported, and prepared to go on board. Many persons at Diou,
seeing the vessels so well fitted out, desired leave to go this
voyage along with us, imagining they had an excellent opportunity of
acquiring both wealth and honour. We committed, however, one great
error in setting out, for having equipped our ships for
privateering, and taken no merchandise on board, we could not touch
at any of the ports of the Red Sea. The patriarch, impatient to be
gone, took leave in the most tender manner of the governor and his
other friends, recommended our voyage to the Blessed Virgin, and in
the field, before we went on shipboard, made a short exhortation, so
moving and pathetic, that it touched the hearts of all who heard it.
In the evening we went on board, and early the next morning being
the 3rd of April, 1625, we set sail.

After some days we discovered about noon the island Socotora, where
we proposed to touch. The sky was bright and the wind fair, nor had
we the least apprehension of the danger into which we were falling,
but with the utmost carelessness and jollity held on our course. At
night, when our sailors, especially the Moors, were in a profound
sleep (for the Mohammedans, believing everything forewritten in the
decrees of God, and not alterable by any human means, resign
themselves entirely to Providence), our vessel ran aground upon a
sand bank at the entrance of the harbour. We got her off with the
utmost difficulty, and nothing but a miracle could have preserved
us. We ran along afterwards by the side of the island, but were
entertained with no other prospect than of a mountainous country,
and of rocks that jutted out over the sea, and seemed ready to fall
into it. In the afternoon, putting into the most convenient ports
of the island, we came to anchor; very much to the amazement and