ourishing their targets
and darting long lances. They were well manned in a boat ten times as
big as our barge, and at least sixty fighting men besides rowers. We
had none to manage our small gun," the gunner having deserted at Goa.

However, the pirates were beaten off, and Fryer and his companions were
mightily praised by the Dutch. These pirates hailed probably from Vingorla,
where the Sawunt Waree chief, known in those days as the 'Kempsant,'[2]
carried on a brisk piratical trade. The name was a corruption of Khem
Sawunt, a common name of the Vingorla chiefs; the Portuguese changed it
into Quemar Santo, 'the saint burner,' on account of his sacrilegious
treatment of their churches.

There were no more determined pirates than the Arabs of Muscat and the
Sanganians of Beyt and Dwarka, who, between them, intercepted the trade of
the Persian Gulf, while the Coolee rovers of Guzarat took their toll of
the plunder. In 1683 the Company's ship _President_ was attacked by the
Muscat Arabs with two ships and four grabs, and fought a gallant action.
The grabs[3] were generally two-masted ships, from one hundred and fifty
to three hundred tons burden, built to draw very little water, and
excellent sailers, especially in the light winds prevalent on the Western
coast. They had no bowsprit, but the main-deck was continued into a long
overhanging prow. The favourite mode of using them was for two or three of
them to run aboard their victim at the same time, and attack, sword in
hand, along the prow. Being built for fighting, and not for trade, they
could sail round the clumsy merchantmen that hailed from the Thames, and,
if pressed, could find safety in the shallow bays and mouths of rivers
along the coast. Three grabs grappled the _President_ at once, but the
boarders were beaten back, and all three were blown up and sunk, on which
the rest of the squadron made off. The _President_ was set on fire in
sixteen places, and lost eleven men killed and thirty-three wounded.

In the following year the _Josiah_ ketch was attacked by the Sanganians
while at anchor, and in the heat of the engagement blew up. A few of the
crew saved themselves in a skiff, but the greater number perished, among
them the commander, Lieutenant Pitts, whose father was known in Bombay as
'the drunken lieutenant.'

In September, 1685, the _Phoenix_, a British man-of-war that had been sent
for a two-years' cruise in Indian waters, was attacked by a S