In November they reached the bay of St. Helena where Vasco da Gama was slightly wounded in an affray with the natives. Hitherto their voyage had been prosperous; but they encountered heavy storms both before and after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, and it required all Vasco’s resolution and Paulo’s persuasiveness to keep the crews to their voyage. The mutinous crew of the _São Gabriel_ had counted without its host, and found Gama little less formidable than the storms of these unknown seas. Not if he were confronted with a hundred deaths, he said, and not if the ships were all filled with gold, would he go back a single yard; but he did not wholly disregard the murmurings of the men, for he clapped the mate and pilot of his ship in irons, to hold them as hostages, and, as they were the only persons who knew anything of the art of navigation, the crew was effectually cowed. At Christmas they reached the land which to this day bears the Portuguese name, Natal, of the time of its discovery. Passing slowly north along the coast, they arrived towards the end of January at the Zambezi River, and in this shelter made a stay of several weeks; but scurvy among the crew forced them again to sea, and in the beginning of March they reached Mozambique. Here, as at Mombasa a month later, the natives received them with every appearance of friendship, but made a treacherous if rather courageous attempt to seize their ships. The King of Melinde, a little further north, was friendly and loyal, and here the Portuguese obtained pilots for the voyage to India. The passage lasted less than a month, and on May 18 they sighted Asia, the end and object of their enterprise, and came to anchor off Calicut on the 21st. Calicut was a few miles distant, and Vasco da Gama, although implored by his brother not to risk his person by disembarking, started on the overland journey. It required some courage, for among the native sightseers who crowded round the Portuguese there were not a few armed and covertly hostile Moors. In the minds of the Portuguese, the East had long been connected with the empire of the Christian Prester John, the half mythical ruler of Abyssinia, and they expected to find the majority of the natives Christians. Accordingly they were easily duped here (as indeed they had been in Africa) and Vasco da Gama and his companions on the way to Calicut worshipped in a Hindu pagoda. The images on the walls were unlike those of the saints to which they had been accustomed in Portugal. Some of them had four arms, the teeth of others protruded a whole inch from their mouths, and their faces were hideous as the faces of devils. Like Little Red Ridinghood, one of the Portuguese, João de Sá, was in the most serious doubt when he saw these figures, and, as he knelt down, in order to avoid any mistake, he said aloud “If this is a devil I worship the true God.” And Vasco da Gama looked across at him and smiled. A che guardando il suo duca sorrise.