he preached to them the words of eternal truth. There it was also, that
to the end the compass of the plain might serve in the nature of a
church, he sometimes celebrated the divine mysteries under the sails of
ships, which were spread above the altar, to be seen on every side.

The Brachmans could not suffer the worship of the pagods to be abandoned
in this manner; but were resolved to be revenged on the author of so
strange an alteration. In order to execute their design, they secretly
engaged some idolaters to lie in wait for him, and dispatch him
privately. The murderers lay in ambush more than once, and in the silence
of the night endeavoured to shoot him with their arrows. But divine
Providence would not suffer their malice to take place; of all their
arrows, one only wounded him, and that but slightly; as it were rather to
give him the satisfaction of shedding some blood in testimony of the
faith, than to endanger his life.

Enraged and desperate for having missed their aim, they sought him
everywhere; and not finding him, they set fire on three or four houses,
where they thought he might possibly be lodged. The man of God was
constrained one day to hide in the covert of a forest, and passed the
following night upon a tree, to escape the fury of his enemies, who
searched the whole forest to have found him. There was a necessity
sometimes that the faithful should keep guard about him day and night,
and to that purpose they placed themselves in arms about the house where
he was retired.

In the meantime, the Badages, who had ravaged the coast of Fishery the
year before, animated of themselves against the Christians, and perhaps
pushed forward by the devils, who saw their empire decaying day by day,
excited also by the desire of glory, and above all things by the hope of