CABKAL SAILS TO MALABAR 87 x against the defenceless Portuguese factors left in his power. Cabral returned to Lisbon in July, 1501, with a rich freight, but having lost seven of his thirteen ships in distant and tempestuous seas. Before his arrival the king had sent forth, in April, 1501, another squadron of four vessels under Joao da Nova, who pursued the same system of plundering and burning the Calicut ships and laying in freight at the rival Malabar ports where the foreign Arabs were either not so numerous or more under control. The experience gained by Cabral formed the start- ing-point of the Portuguese policy in the East. King Emmanuel had the choice between peaceful trade at half a dozen Malabar roadsteads or an armed monopoly founded on the coercion of the chief port, Calicut, and the destruction of the Arab commerce. He chose the armed monopoly. Cabral took the first step by leaving behind a factory at Cochin a measure on which Da Gama had not ventured at any Indian port, and which involved a protective system of some kind. At first it seemed as if the protection could be secured by a Portuguese squadron in Indian waters and by severe reprisals for injuries done to factories on shore. Ac- cordingly in the spring of 1502 the king sent forth a great fleet of twenty ships under Vasco da Gama as Admiral of the Indian Seas, with instructions to leave five caravels to guard the Malabar coast. Da Gama's first voyage in 1497-1499 had been one of discovery: the object of his second was to secure a permanent foothold on the Indian coast for armed
