_ 221 _ old Custom House. He promptly began to fortify it with stone and earth and a lot of wood that he found in the city. In the places he considered most suitable for the batteries, he built bastions and stockades, in which he placed twenty-five pieces of heavy artillery, some of which fired cast-iron balls weighing forty arretels, and some also fired stone balls. Whereupon they began to bombard the fortress at every point, with great ferocity, which returned their onslaught in kind. And as the walls were made of adobe the stone balls from the heavy guns became embedded and stuck in it, half in half out, as if they had been put there by hand, where they were left as a memorial. On the fourth day of the siege, the captain decided it was necessary to apprise the viceroy about it. He had a foist rigged out, which was beached at the foot of the fortress, and he sent Pero Fernandes de Carvalho in it with this message. At mid-night he rowed off, making for the shores of Moghistan and from there he followed the coast as far as Cape Jask, from where he took the regular route. Because the foist might encounter some difficulty on the voyage, the captain sent another two days later, in which a resident of Ormuz named Cosmo Alvares went and took the same route.
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