u will
land and enter the town, I will be upon your head," is more than once
addressed by Sultan Hamed to Captain Haines and seems to have been
understood as a menace; but we have been informed that it rather
implies, "I will be answerable for your safety--your head shall be
in my charge."]

A peremptory requisition was now sent on shore for the immediate
surrender of the town; but the answer of the Sultan was still evasive,
and, as the troops had only a few days' water on board, an immediate
landing was decided upon. On the morning of the 19th, accordingly,
the Coote, Cruiser, Volage, and the Company's armed schooner Mahi,
weighed and stood in shore, opening a heavy fire on the island of
Seerah and the batteries on the mainland, to cover the disembarkation.
The Arabs at first stood to their guns with great determination, but
their artillery was, of course, speedily silenced or dismounted by
the superior weight and rapidity of the English fire; and though the
troops were galled while in the boats by matchlocks from the shore,
both the town and the island of Seerah were carried by storm without
much difficulty. The loss of the assailants was no more than fifteen
killed and wounded--that of the Arabs more than ten times that number,
including a nephew of the Sultan and a chief of the Houshibee tribe,
who fought gallantly, and received a mortal wound; considerable
bloodshed was also occasioned by the desperate resistance made by the
prisoners taken on Seerah in the attempt to disarm them, during which
the greater part of them cut their way through their captors and got
clear off. Most of the inhabitants fled into the interior during the
assault, but speedily returned on hearing of the discipline and good
order preserved by the conquerors; and the old Sultan, on being
informed of the capture of the place, sent an apologetic letter
(Jan. 21) to Captain Haines, in which he threw all the blame on his
son Hamed, and expressed an earnest wish for a reconciliation.
Little difficulty was now experienced in conducting the negotiations,
and during the first days of February articles of pacification were
signed both with the Abdallis and the other tribes in the
neighbourhood. To secure the good-will of the Futhali chief, the
annual payment which he had received from Aden of 360 dollars, was
still guaranteed to him, as were the 8700 dollars per annum to the
Sultan of Lahedj, whose bond for 4191 dollars was further remitted
as a toke