were slain by the Portuguese, and the rest, not having been able to get any provisions, put to sea again. A pitiable remnant, fourteen out of seventy-six who had sailed from England, arrived in Berehaven on 11 June 1593. There Davys took passage in a fisher-boat to Padstow. In his absence his wife, Faith, had taken a paramour, one Milburne, ‘a fugitive and dissolute person’ accused of coining money, who now trumped up some charge against her husband, to protect himself against Davys's revenge and a probable prosecution for coining (Ralegh to Sir Robert Cecyll, 3 March 1593–4). Davys was arrested, though shortly afterwards set free at the instance of Ralegh, who begged that ‘he might have leave to depart, lest some other matters be laid to his charge which are only fit to be tried by course of law and not by authority.’ Whether this leave was given or not is not stated, but Davys appears to have spent the rest of that year, if not also the next, in England, engaged in preparing for publication his ‘Seaman's Secrets’ (1594), and the ‘World's Hydrographical Description’ (1595). The ‘Seaman's Secrets’ is virtually a treatise on practical navigation, and at once became popular among seamen. It ran through eight editions in a comparatively short time, the eighth being published in 1657, and though the methods are obsolete, the book contains much to interest and even instruct the navigator of our own time.
In 1596–7 Davys was again at sea, probably as master of Ralegh's ship at Cadiz and the Azores, and certainly in some capacity that brought him directly under the notice of the Earl of Essex, at whose suggestion he afterwards engaged himself as pilot of the Dutch ship Leeuw or Lion, commanded by Cornelius Houtman and bound to the East Indies. The account of the voyage, written by Davys himself to the Earl of Essex and dated ‘Middelburg, 1 Aug. 1600,’ was published by Purchas (part i. book 2). By this it appears that the Lion and Lioness sailed from Flushing on 15 March 1598 (N.S.); rested for a while in Saldanha Bay, where they lost thirteen men in a fray with the natives; were some time in Madagascar and among the Maldives, and on 21 June 1599 anchored at Acheen. There the king received them at first in a friendly manner, but three months later, on some quarrel which does not appear, he made a treacherous attempt to seize the ships. On board the Lion, Houtman and several men were slain, others jumped overboard. Davys with another Englishman named Tomkins, and a Frenchman, defended the poop, and by advantage of position and arms beat off the assailants and recovered the ship. Meantime the Lioness had been taken and many of her officers and men killed, but Davys and his companions, cutting the Lion's cable and drifting towards the Lioness, opened on her so warm a fire that the ‘Indians’ took to the water. ‘They swam away by hundreds,’ and great numbers were killed or drowned; the king, furious at the failure, put to death all the Dutchmen who were ashore with the exception of eight whom he kept for slaves. ‘We lost in this misfortune,’ says Davys, ‘three score and eight persons, of which we are not certain how many are captured, only of eight we have knowledge.’ After a further fight with a fleet of Portuguese galleys, they got to Pulo-Botum, on the coast of Quedah, where they watered and refreshed. All the pepper and other merchandise that had been collected was left ashore and lost. ‘Many young adventurers,’ says the pilot, ‘were utterly ruinated; among which I do most grieve at the loss of poor John Davys, who did not only lose my friendly factor, but also all my Europe commodities, with those things which I had provided to show my duty and love to my best friends.’ The narrative carries with it a conviction of its substantial truth, and though Davys might be suspected of overrating the part he took in the defence and recovery of the ships, there is nothing boastful in his way of stating it, nor was his conduct, as described, more than was to be expected from one whose whole life had been a continued struggle against storm, ice, and man. Their further adventures were cut short by the determination of the ship's company to return to Europe, and they arrived at Middelburg 29 July 1600. Within a few weeks Davys returned to England, and was almost immediately engaged to go as pilot-major of the fleet fitting out under Captain James Lancaster [q. v.] in the Malice Scourge, a ship just bought from the Earl of Cumberland and renamed the Red Dragon. This expedition sailed from Woolwich on 13 Feb. 1600–1, and returned on 11 Sept. 1603. In the following year Davys engaged for another voyage to the East Indies as pilot of the Tiger of 240 tons, commanded by Sir Edward Michelborne. The Tiger sailed from Cowes on 5 Dec. 1604, made a prosperous voyage to the west coast of Sumatra, arrived at Bantam in October 1605, and on 2 Nov. sailed for Patany. The passage was tedious, and in two months they had advanced no further than Bintang, a little to the east of Singapore. Off this island they met a junk, small, scarcely seaworthy and disabled, but crowded with Japanese who had been pillaging on the coast of China, had been wrecked
