Page:Further India; (IA furtherindia00clif).pdf/105

energy which made success a possibility, would seem to be qualities which are developed to the full only in the European character, which can be communicated to the Oriental only when he is upheld by the leadership of white men in whom he trusts. If the traditional reward of the meek has fallen to the lot of the white nations, it is not through meekness that they have inherited the earth.

After the first abortive assault upon Malacca there fol- lowed a period of nine days during which Dalboquerque instituted a rigorous blockade of the place with a view to starving it into submission. Once more the slender band. of Portuguese adventurers flung itself at the teeming na- tive city, and this time the bridge, which was throughout the key to the entire position, was wrested from the Ma- lays, and they and their allies were routed. On each oc- casion the Sultan of Malacca had himself taken an active part in the fighting, and in the mélée the elephant upon which he was mounted was badly hurt, whereupon, says de Barros, "feeling the pain of its wound, it seized the negro that guided it with its trunk, and dashed him to the ground, on which the king, wounded in the hand, dismounted, and not being recognised, effected his es- cape." And thus Malacca fell, and passed for ever out of the keeping of the Malays, though it was destined to be reft from Portugal by Holland, from Holland by Great Britain, to be surrendered once more to the Dutch for a little space, and to come finally into the hands of England.

"In this second time of taking the city," says the