144 WORKMEN AND HEROES among them had incited the attack upon him at Calicut on his former voyage. The truth is they were rich ; he wanted the plunder ; and there was less likeli- hood of trouble if he killed them than if they were left alive to publish and avenge their losses. It was merely an application of the freebooter's maxim, that " dead men tell no tales." Arriving at Calicut, he found that forty Portuguese who had been left to es- tablish a permanent post, had been killed. With unusual deliberation, he investi- gated the matter and demanded reparation, submission, and a treaty acknowledg- ing the sovereignty of Portugal over India. This being refused, he bombarded the city, burned the ships in the harbor, and compelled the Zamorin himself and all the native princes of the region to submit and acknowledge themselves feuda- tories of Portugal. So rapid were his movements, and so accurate his calculations, that before the close of 1 503 he had reached Lisbon again with thirteen vessels laden to the gunwale with the plunder of the Orient by all odds the richest argosy that had come to any European port since the days of the Romans. Da Gama was now forty-three years old, and must have been in the very prime of manhood. Why so skilled a navigator, so intrepid a commander, so shrewd a negotiator, and so successful an administrator, who had established the power of Portugal from Delagoa Bay to Calcutta, should, at that period of his life, have been laid upon the shelf for twenty years, is a conundrum hard to answer. Knowing the character of Dom Manoel, it is not difficult to guess that his sordid- ness lay somewhere at the bottom of the trouble ; but it is said to Gama's credit, that he neither whined nor remonstrated. It must be admitted, however, that he was succeeded by one who was greatly his superior both as a general, a statesman, and an administrator. If Vasco da Gama laid the foundations of Portuguese empire in the East, Alfonso d' Albu- querque, " the Great," broadened and built upon them as he could never have done. From Aden to Cochin blood flowed beneath his blows, but peace followed ; and though he was termed " the Portuguese Mars," his justice became traditional, and his sagacity was shown in the permanence of the settlements he made, even under the incompetent viceroys who followed him. It was twenty years since Vasco da Gama had commanded a ship. Albuquerque was dead, and his successors had brought shame and defeat upon the Portuguese power in the East. Dom Manoel was dead also, and whatever grievance he had against "the Discoverer of India," seems to have died with him. His successor, Dom JoSo III., casting about for someone to bring order out of confusion, suc- cess out of failure, and honor out of shame, called again into his service the courtly and sagacious mariner, now over sixty years of age ; and conferring upon him the title of viceroy, sent him to retrieve the prestige his successors had lost. His high spirit was yet undaunted, and when he neared the coast of India and found the waters in a strange ferment for which no one could account, as there was neither wind nor tide, he said loftily : " The sea beholds its conqueror and trembles before him ! " It sounds bombastic, but in the mouth of one who had first guided a civilized keel over its surface, such arrogance is at least pardonable.
