1526.

In the next year, at the conquest of Bintang, this king unsolicited sent assistance to his European allies.

1527.

However well founded the accounts may have been which the Portuguese have given us of the cruelties committed against their people by the king of Achin, the barbarity does not appear to have been only on one side.  Francisco de Mello, being sent in an armed vessel with dispatches to Goa, met near Achin Head with a ship of that nation just arrived from Mecca and supposed to be richly laden.  As she had on board three hundred Achinese and forty Arabs he dared not venture to board her, but battered her at a distance, when suddenly she filled and sunk, to the extreme disappointment of the Portuguese, who thereby lost their prize; but they wreaked their vengeance on the unfortunate crew as they endeavoured to save themselves by swimming, and boast that they did not suffer a man to escape.  Opportunities of retaliation soon offered.

1528.

Simano de Sousa, going with a reinforcement to the Moluccas from Cochin, was overtaken in the bay by a violent storm, which forced him to stow many of his guns in the hold; and, having lost several of his men through fatigue, he made for the nearest port he could take shelter in, which proved to be Achin.  The king, having the destruction of the Portuguese at heart, and resolving if possible to seize their vessel, sent off a message to De Sousa recommending his standing in closer to the shore, where he would have more shelter from the gale which still continued, and lie more conveniently for getting off water and provisions, at the same time inviting him to land.  This artifice not succeeding, he ordered out the next morning a thousand men in twenty boats, who at first pretended they were come to assist in mooring the ship; but the captain, aware of their hostile design, fired amongst them, when a fierce engagement took place in which the Achinese were repulsed with great slaughter, but not until they had destroyed forty of the Portuguese.  The king, enraged at this disappointment, ordered a second attack, threatening to have his admiral trampled to death by elephants if he failed of success.  A boat was sent ahead of this fleet with a signal of peace, and assurances to De Sousa that the king, as soon as he was made acquainted with the injury that had been committed, had caused the perpetrators of it to be punished, and now once more requested him to come on shore and trust to his honour.  This proposal some of the crew were inclined that he should accept, but being animated by a speech that he made to them it was resolved that they should die with arms in their hands in preference to a disgraceful and hazardous submission.  The combat was therefore renewed, with extreme fury on the one side, and uncommon efforts of courage on the other, and the assailants were a second time repulsed; but one of those who had boarded the vessel and afterwards