Page:Further India; (IA furtherindia00clif).pdf/85

proposal. "Laissez moi donc planter mes pois," he said in effect; for while he did his best to ingratiate himself with both contending factions, he pointed out that he had come to the East for the purpose of exploiting Malacca, and that his only desire was to set forth upon that undertaking so soon as his ships should have undergone certain much needed repairs. Eventually, therefore, taking with him some of the followers of Dalboquerque who had incurred the anger of Dalmeida, he left the quarrelsome atmosphere of Cochim, and sailed across the Indian Ocean to the Straits.

The Malay chronicler tells us in the Hikâyat Hang Tûah that from the first moment of their arrival in the port the strangers began to abuse the hospitality extended to them, and that having obtained a grant from the Sultan of as much land as could be enclosed by a buffalo's hide, they adopted the stratagem of the Pious Æneas, and cutting it into thin strips made it the boundary line for a goodly plot of ground. Upon this, so the chronicler tells us, they proceeded to build a formidable citadel whose position menaced the town and the royal precincts, whereupon trouble ensued. The version which comes to us from Portuguese sources is somewhat different. Here we learn that Siqueira received a warning from a Javanese girl, who was the mistress of one of his men, that treachery was meditated. This girl swam off to the Portuguese ships under the cover of darkness, and brought word that the Sultan intended to massacre the white men at a great banquet to which he would presently invite them, and that when this piece of business