Page:The Captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse.pdf/185

And they further said that the Portuguese had shot the father of the two brothers who had captured me, in such manner that he died, and that they would now revenge their father's death on me. Thereupon I asked why they would revenge this upon me? I was not a Portuguese; (adding that) I had lately arrived there with the Castilians: I had suffered shipwreck, and I had from this cause remained among them.

It happened that there was a young fellow of their tribe, who had been a slave of the Portuguese; and the savages among whom the Portuguese live had gone into the Tuppin Imba's country to make war, and had taken a whole village, and had eaten the elder inhabitants, and had sold those who were young to the Portuguese for goods. So that this young fellow had also been bartered by the Portuguese, and had lived in the neighbourhood of Brikioka with his master who was called Anthonio Agudin,^[1] a Gallician.

Those who had captured me had retaken the same slave about three months before.

Now as he was of their tribe, they had not killed him. The said slave knew me well and they asked him who I was. He said it was true, that a vessel had been lost on the shore, and the people who had come therein were called Castilians, and they wore friends of the Portuguese. With these I had been, further he knew nothing of me.

Now when I heard, and having also understood that there were Frenchmen among them, and that these were accustomed to arrive there in ships, I always persisted in the same story, and said that I belonged to the allies of the