De Gama was fully satisfied with the arrangement, and had he been dealing with the king only, it seems probable that everything would have gone on well; the more so as the Malabar monarch was already realising large profits from the new trade. But the merchant Moors were less easily satisfied. They knew from the covetous character of the king that so long as the Portuguese were willing to buy, he would continue to supply whatever they required, and that thus the market would be stripped of the articles best adapted for their annual shipments to the Red Sea. They felt that “whenever the Christians should come thither, he would prefer selling his goods to them to supplying cargoes for the Moors;” and that, in the end, they would be “entirely ruined;” a plea, indeed, repeatedly used in many other countries whenever competition first made its appearance. The Moors further argued that the Portuguese could not be merchants, but “evil men of war,” for they paid whatever price was demanded for the produce they required, and made no difference between articles of inferior and superior qualities. But the king refused to listen to their complaints until he had obtained all he desired from the strangers; then, giving heed to the reports of the Moors, and to the entreaties of his factor and minister, who had been doubly bribed, he turned round upon Gama, and by stratagem endeavoured to capture him and his ships. Finding it unsafe to remain any longer in port, the expedition, although only half laden, prepared to take its departure from Calicut, after a sojourn of about seventy days, the captain-major remarking that he was “not going to return to the port, but that he would go back to his country to relate to his king all that had happened to him; that he should also tell him the truth about the treachery of his own people with the Moors; and that, if at any time he should return to Calicut, he would revenge himself upon the Moors.”[13] [Sidenote: Leaves Calicut for Cananore.]