The expectations with which Master Gerald and this humble servant left thine society on our way to Belize were cut short by a storm of which thou must have received notice by this day. We were favoured by the Most Merciful and the lives of all aboard were spared in this shipwreck, my first after many years of seafaring. After finding aid and shelter in a fishing village, he we went thither the port of Belize. Master Gerald's most tender nature was brought to light when on the small pier, about to board back to his fellow English subjects, he released your humble servant of my bond to him. Now that I'm under the sovereignty of King Goodman I can heed thine gentle encouragement to provide a first hand account of my travels that, as in thine words, shall stand longer in paper than the frail memory of listeners. So it this that I set down pen to paper to record in these letters my travels ever since I left my native town of Tutpec in New Spain.
I was a young lad, in the service of the Spanish crown, enrolled to fight a foe unknown to me at that time. All we new about the Moor was that he was worst than the Mexica had been, an explanation as good as any for us Mixtecs. My parents, may the All-Merciful have them under His Shelter, were as ignorant as I about my destination. To cross what we saw as a never-ending sea was something frightful to them, enticing to me and unknown to all of us. As youngsters we dreamt of fighting the Chichimeca under the banners of our King, but the designs of our authorities threw us along our seasoned warriors into an unexpected journey across the Ocean, into His domain of New Castille. I had only trained in the acrobatics of swinging on the vines of my native forests during our childhood games, and the mock-sword fighting of the barracks as I grew up. The first leg of my journey started in the port of Acapulco, with the wondrous view of a Galleon the size of which I have never since, not even in the fleets of most wondrous realms, seen surpassed. During the three uneventful months of passage we were entertained by frightful narratives of starvation during the long return trip. Our Captain started training us for fighting on the deck against an eventual encounter with pirates, with the hands serving as aides to the swordmaster. A few of them climbed to watch us from the ropes. That sight probed me to stage my primitive vine-swinging skills, jumping uninvited with youthful bashfulness and catching the attention of crew and even the Master of our ship. It turned out swinging on the ropes of a ship had a nature somewhat different from that of the vines of the forest I had had my childhood exercise. One of the ropes didn't serve me quite as I expected and I fell from a distance high enough for my landing to unavoidably lack any nimbleness; rather, I tumbled along the deck in a most ungraceful manner; nor high enough to cause any serious injury in my then flexible body. My accident brought an uproar of laughter in my audience. A lieutenant gave a rough welcome to the upright position and they all made good sport of me. I took it in stride and soon enough I was given the chance to familiarize myself with these new surroundings, since that sort of manoeuvre was widely in use during the boarding of an enemy Galleon and I had shown promise.
Fortunately that trip wasn't our baptism of fire and we reached Manila unscathed. After having seen so many ponderous cities, this walled settlement does not seem remarkable now, but at that time it was the largest such sight in my short years, surpassing those of Acapulco. The presence of the Catayan people also called my attention. Those people had given their allegiance to the Spanish crown after a number of rebellions had been crushed, but remained kin to marauding pirates, not the same ones we had come to fight. From there we were hurried along thither the town of Jambangan, for the building of a fort. Many of us expected more fighting than masonry labour, so we toiled with disappointment. After some months the news of a pirate raid on a group of neighbouring islands, though terrible for those who suffered it, cheered us up in view of the expected retaliation. We rallied and manned the ships to go fight the Moor. Close to our the region pillaged we found an enemy outpost and our high spirits drove a fierce fighting. The enemy was dismayed as they saw us leaping from the ropes onto their decks. When they scuttled one of their ships full of enslaved baptised natives, our rage flared beyond bounds. After our glorious victory, a group of us requested to form further punitive expeditions to free other enslaved Christian natives in the Moorish stronghold. Among them we learned about a group of bound European soldiers. Our Captain, Don Hurtado de Corcuera, introduced them as Portuguese, fellow subjects to our King. He praised our valour and the Fort of Saint Joseph turned into frantic preparations as we got more natives from other islands for the construction work. After restraining our careless enthusiasm for longer than we had wished, upon the arrival of Spanish reinforcements, we stormed the stronghold of Jolo. From there I was among those in the forefront of a drive towards what seemed to us then the last post in that moorish chain of islands, Tawi-Tawi. Throughout that campaign my skill in swinging and fighting increased as did my unexpected reknown among the Moors, which made the Raja Bungsu, the new ruler of the Moors, to offer a reward for my capture. So it was that shortly after being promoted to lead a small detachment of men, I suffered what I have come to believe was a betrayal from renegade natives. A small vessel carrying me and a few comrades on a patrol which overreached the counsel of caution, suffered an assault by a much larger force of swift pirate boats. Resistance was futile and as death had become a familiar sight already, I had learned to respect her. We were bound and taken to a larger ship and hence towards their base.
