st coast of Africa, at the entry into the channel of
Mozambique, we encountered a dreadful storm, with excessive gusts of
wind, during which we lost sight of our admiral, and could never hear of
him nor his ship more, though we used our best endeavours to seek him,
by plying up and down a long while, and afterwards staid for him several
days at the island of Comoro, which we had appointed our rendezvous in
case of separation. Four days after this unfortunate separation, we had
a tremendous clap of thunder at ten o'clock one morning, which slew four
of our men outright, without speaking one word, their necks being wrung
asunder. Of 94 other men, not one remained untouched, some being struck
blind, some bruised in their arms and legs, others in their breasts, so
that they voided blood for two days: some were as it were drawn out in
length, as if racked. But, God be praised, they all recovered, except
the four men who were struck dead. With the same flash of lightning our
mainmast was terribly split from the head to the deck, some of the
spikes that went ten inches into the wood being melted by the fervent
heat.

From thence[13] we shaped our course north-east, and not long afterwards
fell in with the north-west point[14] of the island of St Lawrence, or
Madagascar, which, by God's blessing, one of our men espied late in the
evening by moonlight.

[Footnote 13: The place of shaping this course is by no means obvious.
It could not be from Comoro, which is farther north than the north end
of Madagascar, and was therefore probably from near Cape Corientes.--E.]

[Footnote 14: From the sequel, the text is certainly not accurate in
this place, as they were not so far as this cape by 100 leagues. It
probably was Cape St Andrews.--E.]

Seeing from afar the breaking of the sea, he called to some of his
comrades, asking what it meant, when they told him it was the sea
breaking upon shoals or rocks, upon which we put about ship in good
time, to avoid the danger we were like to have incurred. Continuing our
voyage, it was our lot to overshoot Mozambique, and to fall in with
_Quitangone_, two leagues farther north, where we took three or four
barks belonging to the Moors, laden with millet, hens, and ducks, going
as provisions for Mozambique, and having one Portuguese boy on board.
These barks are called _pangaias_ in their language.

Within a few days after, we came to an island called Comoro, which we
found exceedingly populo