turning ships offered many tempting
prizes to freebooters.

In 1683 John Hand, master of the _Bristol_, interloper, cleared his ship
with papers made out for Lisbon and Brazil, and sailed for Madeira. There
he called his crew together, and told them he intended to take his ship
to the East Indies. Those who were unwilling were overawed, Hand being a
mighty 'pastionate' man. He appears to have been half pirate and half
trader; equally ready to attack other traders, or to trade himself in
spices and drugs. On the Sumatra coast, finding the natives unwilling to
do business with him, he went ashore with a pistol in his pocket to bring
the 'black dogs' to reason. The pistol went off in his pocket and
shattered his thigh, and that was the end of John Hand.

In the same year, six men, of whom four were English and two Dutch, while
on passage in a native merchant's ship from the Persian Gulf to Surat,
seized the ship, killing the owner and his two wives. The lascars were
thrown overboard, six being retained to work the ship. Their cruise did
not last long. Making for Honore, they threw the six lascars overboard
when nearing the port. The men managed to get to land, and reaching
Honore, gave information of the would-be pirates to the local authorities,
who seized the ship, and soon disposed of the rogues.

Three years later, two ships under English colours, mounting respectively
forty-four and twenty guns, were reported to have captured vessels in the
Red Sea, to the value of Rs.600,000. The Seedee of Jinjeera, who styled
himself the Mogul's Admiral, received a yearly subsidy of four lakhs for
convoying the fleet, a duty that he was quite unable to perform against
European desperadoes. Public opinion at Surat was at once excited against
the English, and further inflamed by the Dutch and French, who were only
too anxious to see a rival excluded from the trade. Sir John Child, to
pacify the Governor, offered to send a man-of-war to look for the pirates;
but the Dutch and French factors continued to 'spitt their venom' till
the Governor laughed in their faces and asked why they did not join in
sending vessels to look for the rogues, since the matter seemed to them
so serious.

In the same season a gallant engagement was fought against pirates,
though not in Indian waters. The Company's ship _Caesar_, Captain Wright,
bound from England for Bombay, was chased off the coast of Gambia by five
ships, carrying each from twenty to thir