_ 388 _ mooring place from there if the men in the city came out to put our the fire. This battle lasted some eight hours, and ten Portuguese died while more than fifty were injured. Among them was Gaspar Diaz, who lost his right hand which was cut off on the Meri in one blow from a Moor, and fell at his feet with his sword. Afonso de Albuquerque gave him 10,000 reales annuity for life for this injury. Almost 2000 Moors died. The shock and sadness was enormous among those in the city because of the ships being burned, as these were the greatest wealth they possessed. And so the King and Khwaja Attar, on the advice of Rais Nordin, who was the guazil, sent Khwaja Biram and another Moor from the kingdom of Gwadar name Abdullah, who could speak good Castillian, to ask Afonso de Albuquerque for peace. The first thing they said to him was that the king, who was least to blame because of his age, asked for safe-passage for the inhabitants of the city to go to the mooring to put out the fire in the ships, and that he would pledge obedience to the king of Portugal with all the conditions which seemed fair to him. He would take the king of Portugal’s advice as though he were his father, and appealed to him to assume this position henceforth. Afonso de Albuquerque replied that he should have said this earlier so that the damage could have been avoided. As
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