Meanwhile the danger which King Emmanuel had foreseen was coming to pass. The Mameluke Sultan of Egypt perceived that his income from the passage of the Indian trade through Cairo was seriously diminishing, and he resolved to make a great effort to expel the daring European intruders from the Eastern seas. He therefore prepared a large fleet, which was placed under the command of the Emir Husain, an admiral of high reputation, whom the Portuguese chroniclers call Mir Hocem. This was the first regular war fleet which the Portuguese had yet met. The fleets of the Zamorin, which Pacheco and Dom Lourenço de Almeida had defeated, consisted only of merchant ships roughly adapted for war by the Mopla traders of Calicut. The fleet of {37} the Emir Husain, on the other hand, was a regular war fleet; it was largely manned by sailors who had experience in fighting with Christian fleets in the Mediterranean, and who understood the use of artillery quite as well as the Portuguese. The Egyptian admiral in 1508 sailed from the Red Sea for the coast of Gujarát, where the Muhammadan King of Ahmadábád and the Muhammadan Nawáb of Diu, Málik Ayaz, had promised to receive and assist him. Dom Lourenço de Almeida was unable to prevent the junction of the Egyptian and the Diu fleets, and on their approach to his station in the port of Chaul he boldly sailed out and attacked them. His numbers were totally inadequate, but he had received express orders from his father to endeavour to prevent the allies from coming south to Calicut to join the Zamorin. For two days the Portuguese maintained a running fight, but Dom Lourenço de Almeida soon found that he had to deal with more experienced and warlike foes than the merchant captains he had so often defeated. His ship was surrounded on every side; his leg was broken by a cannon-ball at the commencement of the action; nevertheless he had himself placed upon a chair at the foot of the mainmast and gave his orders as coolly as ever. Shortly afterwards a second cannon-ball struck him in the breast, and the young hero, who was not yet twenty-one, expired, in the words of Camoens, without knowing what the word surrender meant. Málik Ayaz treated the Portuguese prisoners whom he took kindly. He {38} wrote to the Viceroy regretting that he was unable to find Dom Lourenço's body to give it honourable burial, and congratulated the father on the glory the son had acquired in his last combat.