Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/180

 132 THE PORTUGUESE POLICY IN THE EAST important positions of Goa, Bassein close to Bombay, Daman on the Gujarat shore, and Diu at the point of the Kathiawar peninsula, were turned by conquest or treaty into Portuguese strongholds. The island fortress of Diu commanded the approach to India from the Persian Gulf just where ships rounded into the Gulf of Cambay, and formed a bulwark against the Arab, Egyptian, or Turkish line of attack. Its conquest and retention cost the Portuguese more blood and treasure than any other of their Indian possessions. Goa, their principal settlement, dominated the south Indian ports, as Diu controlled the coast-route on the north. The pirate chief Timoja proposed to Albu- querque that as the lord of Goa was dead (in reality absent) they should seize the place. This they easily did in March, 1510. But the rightful sovereign, a son of the Ottoman Sultan Amurad n, whose romantic adventures had ended with his carving for himself the kingdom of Bijapur in southern India, hurried back to Goa and drove out the Portuguese in May. During three months of terrible sufferings and heroic endur- ance, the Portuguese were wind-bound in the estuary within the Goa bar and exposed to a superior force on shore. But eventually they got to sea, and when the king was again called away by disturbances in the interior, they recaptured Goa with the help of the pirate Timoja in November, 1510. Its rightful sovereign, Yusuf Adil Shah, the king of Bijapur, died in the fol- lowing month (December 5th). His son was a minor, and during the first years of his reign it was all his