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 INADEQUATE PAY AND RESULTANT PECULATION 163 European " soldiers were miserably paid and miserably fed, the captains receiving each a salary of twelve shillings per month, and living only on rice and fish." A commander of a ship of war, rejoicing in the lofty title of Capitao de Mar e Guerra, was paid " less than a Dutch sergeant." The sea-captains did not suffer, however, as they exercised some control over the local treasuries. They paid their own claims, whether there was much or little left in the coffer, and seized the best part of the goods of patients who died in the hospitals. In 1530 the Malacca coast was left without a sufficient guard, " because in it there are no fifths and perqui- sites, nor what to claw, as there is in other voyages." Some of the Portuguese exploits form a very ro- mance of robbery. One free-lance, Mcote, having taken service under the sovereign of Pegu, rebelled against his master, was proclaimed king, and was finally impaled in front of his own fort in order, as the Burmese sar- castically remarked, " that he might the better look to it." The island which Sancho Panza hoped for, and received, as a reward for his services, has been cited as an invention out of keeping with the realism of " Don Quixote." But more than one incident in the Asia Portugueza of the sixteenth century may have supplied the idea for Sancho 's Barataria. In the middle of that century Jordao de Freitas, having " converted " the King of Amboyna, obtained the island as a gift to himself. Islands were cheap in the boyhood of Cer- vantes. Indeed, John Cabot, when exploring the At- lantic for England in 1497, had set the example by