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Sanctiago! (St. James!) the Portuguese rushed to the attack, "and on this," says de Barros, "the air was rent with a confusion of noises, so that the trumpets, the can- non, and the shouts could not be distinguished from one another, the whole forming a doomsday of fear and terror."

The Malays and the Muhammadan traders who fought with them resisted stoutly, though the mosque and many of the stockades were won from them, and the white men began to entrench themselves upon the ground gained. All day long the battle waged, and the Portuguese toiled at the construction of their defences under the merciless Malayan sun, but gloss it over though they will, the chroniclers are forced to admit that in the end the assault failed, and that by nightfall all the Europeans had been obliged to withdraw to their ships, bearing many dead and wounded with them.

One cannot but marvel at the stubborn courage of these filibusters, battling here under a tropical sun at a distance of thousands of miles from their base; bearding the mightiest of the kings of Malaya in his very strong- hold; and daring to oppose their puny numbers to the fighting strength of a town whose population was esti- mated at 100,000 souls. It was a stupendous enterprise, almost insolent in its scorn of opposing odds, and no parallels to it are found in history save in the story of the European conquests of the earth. The supreme self- confidence which alone could inspire such audacity as this, the reckless courage, and the pride which held the power of the enemy so cheap, no less than the wonderful