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Gama, still a prisoner, threatened the Catoual with the anger of the Zamorin, whom he imagined could never thus have violated the duties of hospitality, but seeing that his menaces produced no effect, he tried bribery, presenting the minister with several pieces of stuff, who, thereupon at once altered his demeanour.

The king at once sent a pilot, with orders to take the Portuguese ships into the safer roadstead of Pandarany, and promised to return himself on the morrow to Calicut; this he did, and ordered his Intendant or Catoual to invite Gama to land and open negotiations.

Upon arriving at the roadstead of Pandarany, Gama found no boat to take him off to the ships, and was forced to sleep on shore. The Catoual never left him, continually seeking to prove to him the necessity of bringing the ships nearer to the land; and when the admiral positively refused to consent to this, he declared him to be his prisoner.

Gama and his companions, under the guidance of the Catoual, had some difficulty in reaching the palace, where the king, who in the narrative is called the "Zamorin," was awaiting them with extreme impatience. Ushered into halls splendidly decorated with silken stuffs and carpets, and in which burned the most exquisite perfumes, the Portuguese found themselves in the presence of the Zamorin.

Their first care was to gain the ear of the Catoual; then they painted in the blackest colours these insatiable adventurers, these bold robbers, whose only object was to spy out the strength and resources of the town, that they might return in force to pillage it, and to massacre those who should venture to oppose their designs.