Admiral entered the Red Sea with the Portuguese fleet, and landed at Masawa four hundred Portuguese under the command of his brother Christophoro da Gama. The Portuguese brought with them firearms, with which apparently the Muhammadan invaders of Abyssinia were at first unprovided. They threw into the struggle with the Somalis and Arabs all the crusading ardour with which their ancestors had driven the Moors out of Portugal. Christophoro da Gama was a heroic figure, a very paladin. He excited the admiration of his Somali opponent, who at one stage of the struggle offered him a safe conduct to the coast and the means of departing from Abyssinia worth all the honours of war. Nevertheless, the four hundred Portuguese inflicted reverse after reverse on the thousands that followed the banner of Muhammad Granye, who at that time was practically master even of the mountainous regions of Abyssinia. Some of the Portuguese went to the assistance of the fugitive Emperor of Abyssinia. Those that remained under Christophoro da Gama, despite the constant defeats they inflicted on superior numbers, gradually found themselves isolated and vastly outnumbered. The Turks had taken alarm at Portuguese successes, and had sent to Muhammad Granye’s assistance a train of artillery, while two thousand Arabs with muskets crossed over from Mokha and joined the Somalis. Thus reinforced, Muhammad Granye attacked the Portuguese entrenched camp, which he ultimately carried, when the unfortunate Christophoro da Gama had one arm broken and his knee shattered. A few of the Portuguese escaped and joined the Abyssinians, but most of them were slaughtered by Muhammad Granye. Christophoro da Gama, however, though wounded, managed with ten of his men to escape on horseback to a forest. Here he was captured by Muhammad Granye, who, after inflicting much torture on him, offered, in admiration of his bravery, to set him at liberty and assist him to return to India, if only he would abjure Christianity. The blazing indignation with which he answered this proposal so enraged Muhammad Granye that he struck off his head with a sword. The body of Dom Christophoro was then cut into quarters and his remains buried in separate places. Ultimately, however, the bones are supposed to have been gathered together by Roman Catholic Abyssinians, and some seventy years later the skull of the martyr was thought to have been found by Jeronimo Lobo.