e ordered his
attendants to give him a little of the red wine which had been sent
that year from Portugal. And when the brigantine had sailed away in
advance to Goa, the vessel proceeded to cast anchor on the bar, on
Saturday night, the fifteenth day of the month of December. When
they told Affonso de Albuquerque that he was at the end of his
voyage, he lifted up his hands and gave many thanks to Our Lord,
because he had vouchsafed to grant him that mercy which he had so
earnestly desired, and thus he remained all through that night with
the {142} Vicar-General, who had already come off from the shore to
the ship, and with Pedro de Alpoem, Secretary of India, whom he
constituted his executor, embracing the crucifix and continually
talking; and he desired the Vicar-General, who was his confessor,
to recite the Passion of Our Lord, written by St. John, to which he
was always devoted, for in it, and in that cross which was made in
the likeness of that whereon Our Lord had suffered, and on His
wounds he rested all the hope of his salvation; and he commanded
them to attire him in the costume of the Order of Santiago, whereof
he was a Commander, that he might die in it; and on the Sunday, one
hour before the dawn, he rendered up his soul to God; and there
finished all his troubles without seeing any satisfaction of
them.'[10]

[Footnote 10: Albuquerque's _Commentaries_, vol. iv. p. 196.]

The corpse of the great governor was at once conveyed to Goa and

'so great was the crying and weeping on all sides, that it seemed
as if the very river of Goa was being poured out.'[11]

[Footnote 11: Albuquerque's _Commentaries_, vol. iv. p. 198.]

The body was conveyed to the Chapel of Our Lady of the Conception,
which he had founded outside the gates of Goa on the spot where he
had witnessed the second capture of the city.

'There accompanied the procession,' it is recorded in the
_Commentaries_, 'all the people of the city, not only Christians,
but Hindus and Moors [Muhammadans], who filled the streets,
demonstrating by the profusion of their tears the great sorrow they
felt at his death. As for the Hindus, when they beheld his body
stretched upon the bier, with his long beard reaching down to his
waist, and his eyes half open, they declared, after their heathen
notions, that it could not be that he was dead, {143} but that God
had need of him for some war, and had t