While Dom Gama was employed loading his ships with the produce of India for Portugal, the king of Calicut had prepared a fleet which he hoped would capture and destroy the fleet of the Christian monarch who had done his people such grievous wrongs. It consisted of “several large ships, and sambacks, and rowing barges, with much artillery and fighting men, and two captain-majors.” But the king of Calicut, either anxious to avoid war, or to obtain information of the condition and power of the vessels then under Dom Gama, sent a confidential Brahmin to Cochym, with a letter to the captain-major, in which, after stating the force now at his command, he expressed a wish that there should be “no more wars nor disputes”[40] between them, and that he would make compensation for the injury his people had sustained on the previous voyage; but the Brahmin received no better reception than his predecessor had done. He was tied to the bits, or framework that surrounds the main-mast; an iron shovel, full of embers, was put “close to his shins, until large blisters rose upon them, whilst the interpreter shouted to him to tell the truth,” as to whether the king his master meant what he said in the letter he had addressed by him to Dom Gama; but as he would not speak, “the fire was brought closer by degrees, until he could not bear it,” and when he had told all he knew, the captain-major “ordered the upper and lower lips of the Brahmin to be cut off, so that all his teeth showed; and he ordered the ears of a dog on board the ship to be cut off, and he had them fastened and sewn with many stitches on the Brahmin, instead of his, and he sent him in the Indian boat to return to Calicut!”[41] [Sidenote: Calicut declares war against Dom Gama.] The king, as well he might, when his mutilated and insulted ambassador presented himself, at once ordered his fleet to proceed in search of the Portuguese, and to intercept them on their way from Cochym back to Cananore, where they had gone to fill their ships with the ginger which had been collected for them at that place. Dom Gama’s departure was, however, delayed for a few days. He had to permanently establish his factory at Cochym, and make arrangements for its protection during his absence, and for the purchase and storage of produce ready for the ships which would annually be despatched to India from the Tagus. He had also to found a Portuguese colony, the first colony of Europeans in India, for which purpose he “left carpenters, and caulkers, blacksmiths, turners, and cordage-makers, who were to refit the ships which had to remain at Cochym,” as well as other “workmen and men-at-arms,” in all sixty persons, to whom “the factor was to give their pay, and a cruzado per month for their maintenance.” [Sidenote: Success of the Portuguese.] [Sidenote: Desecration of the Indian vessels,]