Albuquerque had been in the Indian Ocean for nine years. He had worked continually and at a furious pace to build Manuel’s empire, during which time he had endured the incessant voyaging, the wars, the intriguing, the rigors of the climate. He had been wounded at Calicut, shipwrecked on Sumatra, imprisoned in Cannanore, poisoned in Goa; for three months he had been besieged in the Mandovi River in the rain. He had negotiated, intimidated, persuaded, and killed. To outsiders he appeared indestructible. The bullets and the spear wounds had not felled him; the cannonballs had whistled past his
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