45 



in with seven fishermen of the port of Malacca, 

 they cut ofF their ieeU ears, and noses, and with 

 their blood wrote a challenge to a sea fight to the 

 Portuguese comm«oder, George de Melo. 



Thi^ he was at first uDwilling to accept, as he 

 had only eight small vessels, but, being encourag- 

 ed by St* Francis de Xavier be got ihein ready 

 for sea, meanwhile be was jtJined by two galliots 

 under tSie commartd of Diego Suarez de Melo^ 

 and his son Balthasar, having two hundred and 

 thirty men on board, comnmnded a. d. isit. 

 by Dun Francisco Deza. and, thus 

 strengthened, h^set sail inquest oUhe Achinese 

 fleet/which be found at the latter end of Decem- 

 ber in the liver Pa»iaa in Sumatra and, after aa 

 obstinate resisitance succeeded in destroying, 

 sinking, and capturing nearly the whole of the 

 vei?sels. The Achinese are stated to have lost 

 four thousand men, and the Portuguese only 

 twenty five in this action. 



Malacca, doomed not to remain a. n. iseo-si, 

 long at peace, was again threatened "^8- 

 by a powerful confederacy, raised by Ala^ed-din 

 Shah, who had succeeded his father Mahomed, 

 the ex-king of Malacca, on the throne of Johore, 

 and was resolved to make" a strenuous etTort for 

 the recovery of his hereditary dominions. He 

 persiuaded the Queen of Japara in Java, and seve- 

 ral princes of the adjacent Malayan states to join 

 the league, and invested Malacca with a power- 

 ful fleet and army. The g;irri8on again suffered 

 the extremity of famine, aud the town was on the 

 eve of surrendering, when the enemy, struck 

 with a sudden panic, occasioned probably by the 



