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‘Oh, shameless maiden, misguided girl! Where are you going, blindly and thoughtlessly, in the power of these dogs, our natural enemies? Cursed be the hour I begot you, and cursed be the comfort and luxury in which I reared you!’

But seeing that he did not appear likely to finish any time soon, I hurried to put him ashore, and from there he continued to shout his curses and laments, praying to Mohammed to ask Allah to destroy us, to confound and exterminate us; when we had set sail and could no longer hear his words, we could see his actions: he pulled at his beard and tore out his hair and threw himself on the ground, and once, when he called as loud as he could, we heard him cry:

‘Come back, my beloved daughter, come ashore, I forgive everything! Give those men the money, it is already theirs, and come and console your grieving father, who will die on this desolate strand if you leave him!’

Zoraida heard all of this, and she grieved and wept at everything and could only respond:

‘Pray to Allah, dear father, that Lela Marién, who is the reason I am a Christian, may console you in your sorrow. Allah knows I could not help doing what I did, and these Christians owe me nothing for my decision, for even if I had chosen not to go with them and to remain in my own house, it would have been impossible for me to do so, given the burning desire in my soul to do this deed that seems as virtuous to me, my beloved father, as it appears wicked to you.’

She said this when her father could not hear her and we could no longer see him; I comforted Zoraida, and we concentrated on our journey, which the wind so favored that we were certain we would be on the coast of Spain by dawn the next day. But since the good rarely, if ever, comes to us pure and simple, but is usually accompanied or followed by some disquieting, disturbing evil, it was our bad fortune, or perhaps the result of the curses the Moor had hurled at his daughter, for a father’s curses, no matter who he may be, are always to be feared—in any case, when we were out on the open sea, and almost three hours of the night had gone by, and we were running under full sail and had shipped our oars because the brisk wind meant we did not need them, in the bright moonlight we saw a square-rigged ship very close to us; with all her sails unfurled and heading slightly into the wind, she crossed in front of us, so closely that we were obliged to shorten our sails in order not to ram her, and they had to turn hard on the wheel to give us room to pass. They had gathered on the deck of their vessel to ask us who we were, and where we were going, and where we had come from, but since they asked their questions in French, our renegade said:

‘No one should answer them, for they are surely French pirates, and they plunder everything they come across.’

Because of his warning, no one said a word, and when we had moved a little ahead of them, and they were leeward of us, without warning they fired two cannon, apparently loaded with chain shot, for the first cut our mast in two, and it and the sail fell into the sea, and a moment later the second was fired, hitting us amidships so that the entire side of the vessel was blown open, though it suffered no other damage; but we found ourselves sinking, and we all began to shout, calling for help and imploring those on the other ship to rescue us before we drowned. Then they shortened their sails and lowered a skiff, or small boat, into the water, and twelve Frenchmen got in, well-armed with harquebuses and holding flaming torches, and pulled alongside us; seeing how few of us there were and that our ship was sinking, they rescued us, saying that this had happened because of our discourtesy in not answering them. Our renegade picked up the chest of Zoraida’s treasure and threw it into the sea without anyone noticing what he was doing.

In short, when we were all on board the French ship, and they had learned everything they wanted to know about us, as if they were our mortal enemies they stole everything we had and