134 FATE OF THE DUTCH OFFICIAL book ii
the
Rev. Father Balthasar, Carmelite Monk, went to see him, and sought to
get him to speak of this affair in which he was so prominently
involved. He strongly defended himself against the charge, and making
use of an equivocaÂtion, said, that if it was true that he had taken
the letters, he wished to die without speaking, and not to live three
days. He had not in truth committed the theft, but he had arranged for
its befng done ; and he died at the end of three days, and without
speaking. His Lieutenant, named Bozan, one of those whom he had sent to
escort me to the vessel, and who apparently had opened the bouccha and
committed the theft, after a great debauch, lay down on the terrace of
the house to sleep in the fresh air, and as these terraces have neither
parapet nor anything to prevent a fall, on moving and rolling in his
sleep, he fell over, and on the following day was found dead on the
seashore. As for the Captain of the vessel, who was also in the plot,
four or five days after his arrival at Surat, as he pursued his way, a
Musalman, jealous of his wife, whom he had beaten, and excited to rage
against some Franks who separated them, believing this Captain, whom he
found alone, to be a member of the band, stabbed him five or six times
with a dagger, upon which he fell dead on the ground. Such were the
miserable ends of all these people.
