_ 139 _ needed them to load his merchandise onto them and had to be present while it was done. While he was thus waiting for the ships he could not go and fight the Roumeliotes. But in order to let the Arabs know of his intentions, he sent a fleet to keep watch over the coast between Calicut and Batecala. Its commander-in-chief was Pero Barreto de Magalhaes, and the other captains were Manuel Teles Barreto, Antonio do Campo, Afonso Lopes da Costa, Felipe Rodrigues, Alvaro Pessanha, Pero Cao, Luis Preto, Paio de Sousa, Diogo Pires and Simao Martins. Before this fleet sailed from Cochin, another left from Calicut, having been sent by the king to join Mirocem in Diu, Mirocem was also joined daily by many Roumeliotes and other people from the Red Sea. The Viceroy learnt of this from Lourenco de Brito, who had been warned by Timoja. The news worried the Viceroy considerably, because he didn’t have a powerful enough fleet to fight the Roumeliotes. He specially lacked large ships, which he needed but he dared not take them from his captains, because they were all loaded with cargo. He was also worried because it was almost the end of September, and the fleet had not arrived from Portugal. While he was thus preoccupied, there arrived a ship from Portugal, which brought him news of the others.
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