in such favor,
the first thing that they did was to take back from the poor Chinese
the hulk of the ship and some cloth of little value, which they had
given them because they had feared that they might not be successful
at court. And they did this in spite of the fact that the Chinese,
with their good industry and hard labor, had drawn from the water
the ship, which, as has been said, was stranded and submerged. The
Hollanders carried this spoliation to such an extent that they took
their very clothes from their bodies.

Having completed this very successful exploit, on the fifteenth of
October they despatched for Holanda the "Leon Negro" with sixteen
hundred boxes of changeable silk. Each box contained two picos of
silk (each pico equals five arrobas); besides this, they shipped
three hundred fardos of black and white mantas--all of which will
yield a great sum of money, if it reaches its destination. In the ship
"Fregelingas" the Dutch general returned to the strongholds of Maluco;
he carried with him a great quantity of timber to repair other ships,
and many provisions and munitions to supply their fortresses. The
other two ships, the "Sol Viejo" and the "Galeaca," warned us that
they intended to come to the coast of Manila about April, in order to
plunder at once the ships which come to this city at that season. This
has really happened, because for almost two months two Dutch ships have
been in the place [13] [where they seized the ships from China. This
has caused much apprehension in this city--_V.d.A._] which last year
furnished so powerful a fleet; for then it had galleons with which
to defend itself. Now it has none, because six galleons were sent
to other islands in order that the injuries that they had received
in the late battle might be repaired. On the eleventh of October a
furious hurricane overtook the ships and, [since they had been pierced
by balls in the battle--_marginal note in MS.; also in V.d.A_.] they
parted in the middle and sank in the sea. The twenty-four pieces of
artillery which the galleons carried--four in each galleon--were lost
with the ships. They were, however, neither very large nor of much
value. Most of the people escaped by swimming, or upon some rafts;
but as many as four hundred persons, including Spaniards, Indians,
and Chinese, were drowned. And some of those who had escaped from the
storm by means of the rafts perished from hunger out at sea, after the
storm subsided. In t