_ 150 _ with him. They finished it in such a short time that the local people were amazed, and the King of Calicut even more so. In all this time he had never dared to send any men to interrupt the work, although he had boasted he would. He was deeply offended by the audacity of the governor in building the fortress in his territory, and the loss of prestige he would suffer thereby. The finished fortress stood on a plain close to the sea. It was square, and on each side, it had a very strong bulwark. The walls between the bulwarks were fifty feet wide, along the inside walls were the houses of the officers of the fortress and of the frontier fordes. In the middle was a keep, also built very strongly. The holes well equipped with artillery. The governor gave the captaincy of this fortress to his personal friend Diogo Pereira, even though he was very old and other men with greater service and more able to defend it had asked for the post. Leaving the command of the coast to a noble called Manuel de Sousa, a native of Evora, with a fort of three hundred-men. He then set off for Goa where he found Antonio Saldanha making ready to go to Cape Guardafui where he was being sent as commander of a fleet.
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