Page 98 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

98 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

that they need noe more fear.” Owing probably to Jour-
dain’s representations the men were recalled to the ships,
V
and on July 26 they departed for India.
News was long in reaching England from India in those
days, and it was doubtless in entire ignorance of the treat­
ment accorded to Sharpeigh that the imposing fleet under
Sir Henry Middleton was directed to make the develop­
ment of the Aden and Arabian trade its first work in the
East. November, 1610, found the ships safely at anchor in
Aden harbour. The visitors, like their predecessors, were
not prepossessed with the outlook. It seemed to their
minds, vividly coloured with the impressions of the Home­
land, to be a ghastly Ultima Thule upon which the spirits of
Destiny had placed an irrevocable ban of infertility. Signs
%
of habitation they could see none, apart from a few build­
ings near the shore. Everywhere the eye ranged over a
black expanse of brown rock, rising precipitously in places
1
to fantastically-shaped pinnacles whose outlines were
sharply defined in the glare of the tropical sunlight. Stretch­
I
ing away to the North until its rocky ridges were lost in the
:
shimmering haze was a coastline as desolate and forbidding i i
i as the rest, with no indication that human life found support
i' ' anywhere in its vicinity. But the explanation of the
mystery was soon forthcoming to the visitors. They dis­
covered that the settlement was situated in a hollow at the
foot of “ an unfruitfull mountain,” where a town could
hardly have been suspected to exist. Like Sharpeigh’s
! men they were struck with the natural strength of the place,
which they considered was “ not easily to be won, if the
defenders within be men of resolution.”
Since the visit of the Ascension and her consort, Rejib
Aga had been promoted to the position of governor of

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