Their instructions to banish every Mohammedan in Calicut was faithfully obeyed. Don Vasco seized and hanged a number of helpless merchants quietly trading in the harbour. Cutting off their heads, hands, and feet, he had them flung into a boat, which was allowed to drift ashore, with a cruel suggestion that the severed limbs would make an Indian curry. Once more Calicut was bombarded and Don Vasco sailed on to other ports on the Malabar coast, where he loaded his ships with spices taken from poor folk who dared not refuse. He then sailed home again, reaching Portugal "safe and sound, _Deo gratias_," but leaving behind him hatred and terror and a very quaint idea of these Christians who felt it their duty to exterminate all followers of Mohammed. Conquest usually succeeds discovery, and the Portuguese, having discovered the entire coast of West, South, and a good deal of East Africa and western coast of India, now proceeded to conquer it for their own. It was a far cry from Portugal to India in these days, and the isolated depots on the coast of Malabar were obviously in danger, when the foreign ships laden with spoil left their shores. True, Vasco da Gama had left six little ships this time under Sodrez to cruise about the Indian seas, but Sodrez wanted treasure, so he cruised northwards and found the southern coasts of Arabia as well as the island of Socotra. He had been warned of the tempestuous seas that raged about these parts at certain seasons, but, heeding not the warning, he perished with all his knowledge and treasure. Expedition after expedition now left Portugal for the east coast of Africa and India. There were the two cousins Albuquerque, who built a strong fort of wood and mud at Cochin, leaving a garrison of one hundred and fifty trained soldiers under the command of one Pacheco, who saved the fort and kept things going under great difficulties. On the return of Albuquerque, the hero of Cochin, the King decided to appoint a Viceroy of India. He would fain have appointed Tristan d'Acunha,--the discoverer of the island that still bears his name,--but he was suddenly struck with blindness, and in his stead Dom Francisco Almeida, "a nobleman of courage and experience," sailed off with the title of Viceroy. Not only was he to conquer, but to command, not only to sustain the sea-power of Portugal, but to form a government. There is a story told of the ignorance of the men sent to man the ships under Almeida. So raw were they that they hardly knew their right hand from their left, still less the difference between starboard and larboard, till their captain hit on the happy notion of tying a bundle of garlic over one side of the ship and a handful of onions over the other, so the pilot gave orders to the helmsman thus: "Onion your helm!" or "Garlic your helm!" [Illustration: A SHIP OF ALBUQUERQUE'S FLEET. From a very fine woodcut, published about 1516, of Albuquerque's siege and capture of Aden. In the British Museum.]