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the way to the Cape of Good Hope a "Portugal carawel laden by merchants of Lisbon for Brasile" was snapped up, containing "divers necessaries fit for our voyage: which wine, oyle, olives and capers were better to us than gold," as Edmund Barker, Lieutenant, appreciatively re- cords. In June, 1592, Lancaster, after cruising off the north of Sumatra, reached "Pulo Pinaon" (Penang), where he decided to await the change of the monsoon. Here many men died of sickness, and when Lancaster put to sea his company numbered only thirty-three men and one boy, "of which not twenty-two were found for labour and helpe, and of them not a third part sailors." None the less the adventurers did not hesitate to give chase to "three ships, being all of burthen sixty or seventy tunnes, one of which we made to strike with our very boat," though her consorts were spared because the goods they contained belonged to natives of Pegu, and not, like those which she contained, to the hated "Portugals." In September Lancaster sailed southward into the Straits of Malacca as far as Pulau Sămbîlan, a little group of islands situated near the mouth of the Pêrak River, where he lay in wait for shipping passing to and from Malacca. He succeeded in effecting the cap- ture of two important Portuguese vessels, which made only a poor resistance, and then, "douting the forces of Malacca," as well he might, he made his way northward to Junk Ceylon, back to Sumatra, and thence to the Nic- obars. After short stays at the first and last of these places, he proceeded to Ceylon, where it had been his in- tention to await a fitting opportunity to fall upon the