Early In The Morning Of The 3d We Set Sail To The Southwards, The Better
To Discover, And So All Day We Kept To Windward Of Aden.
We soon
descried three sail bound for Aden, but they stood away from us, and we
could not get near them, as it blew hard.
At night we did not come to
anchor, but lay to, to try the current by our drift, which I found to be
three leagues in ten hours. The morning of the 4th I came to anchor a
league or four miles from Aden, in twelve fathoms. Seeing a ship
approaching, we set sail very early in the morning of the 12th to
intercept her; and at day-light saw her at anchor about three miles
south of us. We immediately made sail towards her, which she perceiving,
got under weigh for Aden. Between nine and ten, by firing a shot, she
struck her top-sails, and sent her boat to us, saying she belonged to
the Zamorin, or King of Calicut, whence they had been forty days. The
nakhada, or commander of this ship, was Abraham Abba Zeinda,[361] and
her cargo, according to their information, consisted of tamarisk,[362]
three tons; rice, 2300 quintals; jagara, or brown sugar, forty bahars;
cardamoms, seven bahars; dried ginger, four and a half quintals; pepper,
one and a half ton; cotton, thirty-one bales, each containing five or
six maunds. Her crew and passengers consisted of seventy-five persons,
of whom twenty were appointed to bale out water and for other purposes
below, eight for the helm, four for top and yard and other business
aloft, and twenty boys for dressing the provisions, all the rest being
merchants and pilgrims. Her burden was 140 tons. Having carefully
examined them, and finding they belonged to a place which had never
wronged our nation, I only took out two tons of water, with their own
permission, and dismissed them, giving them strict injunctions not to go
to Aden, or I would sink their ship. So they made sail, standing farther
out from the land, but going to leewards, we were forced to stand off
and on all day and night, lest in the night she might slip into Aden.
[Footnote 361: Perhaps rather Ibrahim Abu Zeynda, or Sinda. - Astl. I.
421. b.]
[Footnote 362: Probably turmeric. - E.]
Every ship we saw, before we could come to speak them, had advice sent
by the governor of Aden to inform them of us. When the Calicut ship was
under our command, the governor sent off a boat, manned with Arabs,
having on board two Turkish soldiers of the garrison, who had formerly
been instruments of Abdal Rahman[363] aga, to bind and torture our men
whom they had betrayed. On seeing our men, whom they had used so ill,
they were in great doubt what usage they might now receive, as their
guilty conscience told them they merited no good treatment at our hands.
They brought some fruit to sell, and, I suppose, came as spies to see
what we were doing.
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