Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/148

 102 FIRST STRUGGLE FOR THE INDIAN SEAS eyes and lighted up the worn face. The ringleader of his rebellious captains, Joao da Nova, to whom he had been forgiving in vain, died in poverty at Cochin in 1509. " But Affonso de Albuquerque," as his own Com- mentaries state, " forgot all that he had been guilty of toward himself, and only held in memory that this man had been his companion in arms and had helped him in all the troubles connected with the conquest of the kingdom of Ormuz like a cavalier, and ordered him to be buried at his expense with the usual display of torches, and himself accompanied the body to the grave clad all in mourning." Albuquerque arrived at Cannanore in December, 1508, and produced secret orders which he carried from the king, appointing him to the supreme command in India on the expiration of the Viceroy Almeida's three years of office. He found Almeida preparing to revenge his son Lourengo slain in the gallant attempt to prevent the coalition of the Egyptian fleet with the Calicut ships. Albuquerque chivalrously acknowledged the father's claim to be himself the avenger of the noble youth, and accepted Almeida's plea that his three years of office did not expire till January, 1509. In February, 1509, Ahneida, as we have seen, defeated the combined navies of Egypt and the Indian coast with terrible slaughter off Diu. But after his victorious return to Malabar he refused to give up his office, eventually threw Albuquerque into prison, and threatened to send him in chains to Lisbon. The arrival of the yearly fleet under a high officer of State, Dom Fernao de Coutinho,