Page 102 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

to the Shaikhs, saying that if the European Lady and her niece,
and their attendants, were not handed over at once, lie would
hold the Bahrain trading vessels until he received orders from
Bombay.
Once more the Shaikhs denied, indignantly, that there were
any European women in Bahrain, and the Banian repeated his
assurances that there never had been any European women held
there, and lie told Bruce that what he said in the beginning was
all a mistake. The Shaikh, in his letter to Bruce, complained
bitterly about the loss of his trade by the detention of his ships
and pointed out that Bruce’s action was causing his people to lose
a far greater sum of money than the price of any women, even a
European Lady and her niece, who might be sold as slaves in
Bahrain where, in fact, no women were being held or sold.
Bruce appears to have been satisfied with this reply, or perhaps
lie gave up the whole affair as a bad business. The Bahrain cap­
tains were put back in their ships and allowed to leave for home.
One of the ships, however, stayed behind.
The Captain of this ship lodged a complaint with Loch that
while his ship was held by the Navy, the Marines from H.M.S.
Conway had stolen from it a valuable bag of pearls. Loch and
the Captain of the Conway held an enquiry, but were unable to
satisfy themselves that there was any truth in the charge, so Loch
asked Bruce to deal with the matter. Bruce, on his part, ‘passed
the baby’ to Shaikh Abdul Rasool, the Shaikh of Bushirc. The
Shaikh sent for the Captain, and asked him a few questions:
‘which he prevaricated; his heels were then placed in the bastinado
where, after a few strokes, the bundle of pearls was produced
from the man’s breast. Thus the fellow received his bastinadoes,
paid the Shaikh a sum for not receiving more punishment, and a
remuneration to those who had inflicted the punishment, and
paid all the expenses of the investigation.’ Loch’s comment on
the affair was ‘They can run up an account for justice in that
country as in others, aye, and squeeze it out of them too’.
As Loch says: ‘what was the object of the Banian? I never
succeeded in discovering whether it was some mercantile object,
or otherwise.’ When one reads the story today, there seems to
be strong reason for supposing that the whole affair of the Euro­
pean Lady and her niece was a concoction of the Banian, but what
could have been his purpose in stirring up such a mare’s nest is
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