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the wives and relations of those who had been so shamefully massacred, bewailing in the most heart-*rending manner their loss, and imploring the king to render them aid and protection from further injury. Although the king's power was feeble compared to that of the Portuguese, with their trained men of war, and vastly superior instruments of destruction, the sight of his faithful Brahmin, ''whom he had despatched in good faith'' to offer any conditions of peace which Dom Gama might demand, led him to resolve with "great oaths" that he would expend the whole of his kingdom in avenging the terrible wrongs which had been inflicted upon his people. Summoning to his council his ministers and the principal Moors of the city, he arranged measures for their protection from the even still greater dishonour and ruin which was threatened with awful earnestness by their invaders. The Moors, with one voice, "offered to spend their lives and property for vengeance." In every river arrangements were made for the construction of armed proas, large rowing barges and sambacks, and as many vessels of war as the means which their country afforded could produce. But long before this fleet was ready, Dom Gama had sailed with his expedition for Cochym, where he arrived on the 7th of November, having on his passage done as much harm as he could to the merchants of Calicut, many of whose vessels he fell across in his cruise along the coast.

Cochym, like Cananore, had resolved from the first to court the friendship of Portugal. Its rulers conceived it more to their interests to submit to the conditions of Dom Gama, however humiliating, than