GO THE CAPTURE OF MATLAGGA, A.D; 1511. 
King Emmanuel put an end to the quarrel by naming both the 
disputants Viceroys and by giving each of them a fleet anda 
separate sphere of authority. This was in 1508. To another 
adventurous spirit, Diego Lopez de Sequeira, the King gave an 
independent command, a squadron that was to operate outside the 
waters of India and Africa and to bring new oceans under the sea- 
power of Portugal. These last were the ships that cast anchor at 
Malacca on that fateful Ist August, 1509. 
As soon as the fleet was anchored a boat put off from the shore 
to ask in the name of the Bendahara who Sequeira was and why 
he. came. Sequeira had brought an Arabic letter from King 
Emmanuel to the Sultan of Malacca; he asked permission to deliver 
it: along with the gifts that went with such epistles. He was forced 
to wait. His arrival was an event of the first magnitude to Malacca; 
was it wise to begin relations of which no man could predict the 
end? So thought the Bendahara. The Sultan saw no harm in 
reading a letter and receiving gifts that committed him to nothing; 
he overruled his minister. A Portuguese named Teixeira was sent 
ashore and was conducted on an elephant to the palace, where he 
had the desired audience of the King. It is not difficult to picture 
the scene: the crowds outside who mobbed Teixeira in their 
inquisitiveness ; and the silent staring faces that lined each side of 
the long palace-gangway up which an envoy was expected to make 
his way, with many halts and ceremonious bows at every few feet 
of the passage and every step of the dais. Teixeira was a stranger 
to Malay etiquette. He presented his letter with a sailor’s jovial 
cordiality, and in a burst of further friendliness he fastened a 
necklace of beads round the neck of the Bendahara, just as though 
that minister was an African Chief who would glory in such tinsel. 
An angry murmur followed the Portuguese as he fumbled with the 
sacred person for the first noble in the country. “Let him alone: 
heed him not; he is only a mannerless boor’’, said the Bendahara. 
~Teixeira’s bold and blustering assurance was intensifying the 
‘nervousness, the fear of the Unknown, that chilled every heart in 
Malacca. 
_ The days passed. No man dared attack the strangers ; yet no 
man ventured to befriend them or trade with them, for who could 
~foresee the end? The Indian merchants were anti-Portuguese to. 
‘aman; they knew what trade-rivalry meant. The Bendahara saw 
that the strangers would be far less tolerant of oppression than the 
‘Indians whom they wished to supplant; in the interest of trade he 
“preached. a holy war against the infidel. The warriors of the city 
‘were discreet. They were to getithe hard blows of the war, and: 
the Bendahara the pickings of the. trade; they elected to arm and 
wait. No-one in fact wanted to fight. Sequeira had come for 
customers. He waited, hoping that the Malays would appreciate 
his pacific policy, but he could gain nothing by delay: it was the 
one thing that. the Malays desired. Sequeira grew impatient, then 
petulant, then menacing; the monsoon was slipping by and he 
Tour. Straits Branch 
