for they are accustomed to jump from their little boats after fish, and to catch and eat them raw.  Their boats are very narrow, and have only a counterweight at the opposite end, where they carry their sail.  The sail is lateen, and woven from palms, in these craft do they venture forth intrepidly through those seas, from island to island, so that one would think that they had a treaty with wind and water.  The ships en route to the Filipinas pass through these islands, at different latitudes at various times.  So many boats go out to meet them, that they quite surround the ships.  The natives try to trade water and the products of their islands for iron, the substance that they esteem most; but, if they are able to steal the iron, without giving anything for it, they do so.  It is necessary to aim an arquebus (which they fear greatly) at them in order to get the article returned.  And to induce them to leave the ships free, there is no better method than to fire the arquebus in the air, the reverberations of which cause them to hide, fear, and vanish.  While the ship in which I took passage was passing one of the islands, many small boats came out as usual.  Among them came one belonging to a robust youth, who was coming to look for a Castilian, who had been his captive, as he desired to see him.  This Spaniard, with others who escaped from the ship “Santa Margarita” (which was wrecked on those islands), lived among those barbarians, until, by good fortune, the ships with succor passed there, and they embarked in them.  The Spaniard, who had been the slave of this Indian, was with us.  As soon as the latter saw him, he boarded our vessel fearlessly.  And still with no signs of fear, he went among our men and threw himself into the arms of the man whom he knew, and who had eaten his bread and lived in his house.  He was quite covered with marks of teeth; and when the Spaniard, who knew something of their language and customs because of his stay among them, was asked the reason, he said that that native had but just been married, and the dowry that he had given was to receive those bites from his wife without murmuring.  In that way do the women elect and choose their husbands.  The native was loaded down with scissors, knives and iron.  With all this load he dived into the water, and at the moment he was thought to have gone to the bottom, because of the weight of his load, he reappeared quite at his ease, placed his load in his little craft, then got in himself, and hoisted his sail.  He himself attended to all the duties of steersman and lookout, and ploughed those seas as if his craft were a powerful galleon.  The household economy of these, as of the other natives, is uniform, as will be told later on; so that all appear as if cut out by one pair of shears—­notable indications that they are all lopped from one trunk.

Chapter V

Of the discovery of these islands