_ 33 _ destroyed, with the loss of 40 of our men, buried by a premature explosion of a bastion. D. Antão sent the ocean-going ships to Ormuz with all the local reserves and followed with 18 foists as far as the mouth of the present-day Shatt-al-Arab through which the Tigris and the Euphrates (reunited upstream) flow. But our captain, disgusted by the intrigues in which the Pasha of Basra involved him, abstained from further operations and returned to Ormuz. The Portuguese were never either masters nor admirers of intrigue, even in war, where it is allowed. In Constantinople, the Sultan could not resign himself to the loss of El Katiff. He correctly attributed it to the control that the Portuguese exercised over the sea with their fleets, even when composed only of small foists or light cutters, and he decided to renew the naval offensive, but limiting it to the waters of the Gulfs of Persia and Ormuz with no more oceanic flights of fantasy. Thus 25 of the best and most powerful Mediterranean-type galleys sailed from Suez under the command of the already famous admiral Piri-bey, with strict instructions to make directly (and if possible secretly) for Basra, where orders awaited them.
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