Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/143

 ALMEIDA, PORTUGUESE VICEROY OF INDIA 97 All he could do was to throw himself across their path, and at the price of his own life to give his father time to gather the Portuguese forces. A cannon-shot broke the young hero's leg at the first onset, but he had himself placed on a chair at the foot of the mainmast, and continued quietly to issue his orders till a second ball shattered his breast. The Moslem victors gave him honourable burial and respectfully congratulated Almeida on a son who, at the age of twenty-two, had covered himself with imperishable glory. In the following spring, 1509, Almeida in person defeated the combined Moslem fleets off Diu and slew three thousand of their men. The aggressions of the Turks upon Egypt, ending in its conquest in 1516, gave the Mamluk Sultan of Cairo work nearer home and disabled him from further expeditions on a valid scale to the Indian coast. Almeida's victory off Diu on Feb- ruary 2, 1509, secured to Christendom the naval suprem- acy in Asia and turned the Indian Ocean for the next century into a Portuguese sea. The first Christian Viceroy of India had done his work, but even while he was doing it King Emmanuel's views were taking a wider range. The task of Almeida was to secure the command of the Indian Ocean and he declined to divide his forces by maintaining garri- sons not absolutely indispensable on shore. " The greater the number of fortresses you hold," he wrote to the king, " the weaker will be your power. Let all our forces be on the sea; because if we should not be powerful at sea (which may the Lord forbid!) every-