The Turks at this time were the terror and dread of all the Christian nations. In the West they had lately occupied Hungary, laid siege to Vienna, and possessed themselves of all the fortresses hitherto held by the Venetians in the Archipelago and the Morea. Having acquired the superiority over Egypt by dethroning the Mameluke sultans, and by the renunciation of the caliphs of Bagdad (long exiles in Egypt), the headship of the Mahometan church, they were now carrying on, with renewed energy, by way of the Red Sea, the perpetual war waged in the East, as well as in the West, by the Mussulmans against the infidels; and had, indeed, just before Pinto’s arrival at Diu, besieged that city in great force. Going to cruise against these Mussulman enemies, after various adventures and a visit to Abyssinia,—with which secluded Christian or semi-Christian kingdom the Portuguese had opened a communication,—Pinto was captured at the entrance of the Red Sea, carried to Mocha, and there sold to a Greek renegado, and by him to a Jew, from whom he was redeemed by the Portuguese governor of Ormus, who furnished him with the means of reaching Goa. At this centre of Portuguese enterprise and adventure Pinto entered into the service of Dom Pedro de Faria, captain-general of Malacca. Perceiving his superior intelligence and adroitness, Faria sent him on numerous missions to the native princes of those parts, by intermeddling in whose domestic affairs the Portuguese generally contrived to find a foothold for themselves. Despatched on one of these missions, he was shipwrecked, made a slave of, and sold to a Mussulman, who carried him to Malacca, whence he was again sent on a new mission, provided with money to redeem certain Portuguese captives, and taking with him also a small sum, which he had borrowed at Malacca, to trade upon for himself. While occupied with this mission, Pinto met, at Patana [present Patany] (on the east shore of the Malay peninsula, and some four hundred miles to the north of Malacca), with Antonio de Faria, a kinsman of his patron’s, sent thither on a political mission, but who had also improved the opportunity for trade, by borrowing at Malacca twelve thousand crusados,[12] which he had invested in cloths. Finding no market there for these goods, Faria was induced to despatch them to Lugor, on the same coast, further north; and Pinto, with his small adventure, was led by the hope of a profitable trade to embark in the same vessel. He arrived safely near Lugor; but the vessel, while lying in the river below that city, was boarded by a Saracen corsair. Pinto with two others plunged into the water and escaped, wounded, to the shore; and having succeeded in reaching Patana, he communicated to Antonio de Faria information of their mutual loss.