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Dalboquerque refused to allow Vasconcellos to proceed upon his way, and retained him and his fleet to aid him in a combined attack upon Goa. The hands of the greatest of the Portuguese viceroys were more than usually full at this juncture. The coming of the filibusters had set the whole of the western coast of India in a flame of war; the Portuguese settlements on the island of Socotra and in the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf were importunate in their prayers to Dalboquerque to come to their assistance; and meanwhile, in distant Malacca, a number of white men, held in captivity by the Malays, were scanning the sky-line to the north hoping to sight the rescuing fleet for which, during so weary a period, they looked in vain.

By February, 1511, however, Goa had been retaken, and the Coromandel coast was for the moment cowed into submission, wherefore Dalboquerque had leisure at last to look to the more remote portions of his dominions. In that month, accordingly, he set out for the Straits of Hormuz to carry succour to those of his countrymen in that direction whose clamour, backed by repeated orders from the King to erect a fort at Aden, had distracted him all the time that he was too deeply engaged in India to be able to spare them a man or a ship. But the winds proved adverse, and finding that he battled with them in vain, Dalboquerque decided to make a virtue of necessity, and to turn his face towards the Straits of Malacca. Diogo Mendez de Vasconcellos who, it will be remembered, had been sent out for the special purpose of chastising the Sultan of their kingdom, had throughout