The Admiral ordered the ship to be repaired, and the casks to be filled alongside for ballast. This was a very bad port, and he feared he might have to cut the cables. This was so, and he made sail for the island of San Miguel; but there is no good port in any of the Azores for the weather they then experienced, and there was no other remedy but to go to sea.
Yesterday the Admiral left that island of Santa Maria for that of San Miguel, to see if a port could be found to shelter his vessel from the bad weather. There was much wind and a high sea, and he was sailing until night without being able to see either one land or the other, owing to the thick weather caused by wind and sea. The Admiral says he was in much anxiety, because he only had three sailors who knew their business, the rest knowing nothing of seamanship.[247-1] He was lying-to all that night, in great danger and trouble. Our Lord showed him mercy in that the waves came in one direction, for if there had been a cross sea they would have suffered much more. After sunrise the island of San Miguel was not in sight, so the Admiral determined to return to Santa Maria, to see if he could recover his people and boat, and the anchors and cables he had left there.
The Admiral says that he was astonished at the bad weather he encountered in the region of these islands. In the Indies he had navigated throughout the winter without the necessity for anchoring, and always had fine weather, never having seen the sea for a single hour in such a state that it could not be navigated easily. But among these islands he had suffered from such terrible storms. The same had happened in going out as far as the Canary Islands, but as soon as they were passed there was always fine weather, both in sea and air. In concluding these remarks, he observes that the sacred theologians and wise men[248-1] said well when they placed the terrestrial paradise in the Far East, because it is a most temperate region. Hence these lands that he had now discovered must, he says, be in the extreme East.
Yesterday the Admiral anchored off Santa Maria, in the place or port where he had first anchored. Presently a man came down to some rocks at the edge of the beach, signalling that they were not to go away. Soon afterwards the boat came with five sailors, two priests, and a scrivener. They asked for safety, and when it was granted by the Admiral, they came on board, and as it was night they slept on board, the Admiral showing them all the civility he could. In the morning they asked to be shown the authority of the Sovereigns of Castile, by which the voyage had been made. The Admiral felt that they did this to give some color of right to what they had done, and to show that they had right on their side. As they were unable to secure the person of the Admiral, whom they intended to get into their power when they came with the boat armed, they now feared that their game might not turn out so well, thinking, with some fear, of what the Admiral had threatened, and which he proposed to put into execution. In order to get his people released, the Admiral displayed the general letter of the Sovereigns to all Princes and Lords, and other documents, and having given them of what he had, the Portuguese went on shore satisfied, and presently released all the crew and the boat. The Admiral heard from them that if he had been captured also, they never would have been released, for the captain said that those were the orders of the King his Lord.