Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/158

110 their momentary successes at Aden ended in lasting failure. In vain the Lisbon court tried to make a few years' arrangement with the Turks, offering in 1541 to supply pepper in exchange for wheat, and passes for Moslem ships in Indian waters in return for free entrance of Portuguese ships to Aden and the Arabian ports of the Red Sea.

The unholy project came to nought. Four years later, in 1545, the Turks boldly attacked the Portuguese Diu; in 1547, their janizaries appeared before Portuguese Malacca; in 1551 and again in 1581 their galleys sacked Portuguese Muscat. In the next chapter we shall see a rough demarcation arrived at between the Portuguese and Turkish spheres of influence on the Persian coast—but a line ever shifting with the fortunes of a ceaseless war. After the union of the two Iberian crowns in 1580, as before it, the Portuguese in Asia remained the outflanking force of Christendom against the Turk.