Page 104 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

CHAPTER VIII

‘So I embarked oil a ship, and it descended to the
city of Basra, and we traversed the sea for many
days and nights. We passed by island after
island, and from sea to sea, and from land to
land.’
First Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor, E. \V. Lane’s translation

A FTER his visits to Bahrain, Loch returned to Bushire
/ \ where he stayed in the Residency with Bruce. When he
1 jL^landcd on the pier, the first person he met was ‘a good-
looking, well-made man in Persian dress, who accosted me in
such good English, mixed with all the nautical idioms, interlarded
with slang and oaths, which made me doubt at first that he was '
not an Englishman’. Loch soon discovered that he was a Persian
who went by the name of ‘Rogue Ali’, about whom he had
heard from Dent, one of the Eden's officers, who had been in
Bushire before. ‘Rogue Ah’ was interpreter, durbash and general
purveyor to the Residency, and had acquired the nickname be­
cause there was another Ali employed by the Resident, who had
been given the name of ‘Honest Ali’. ‘Rogue Ali’ was a well
biown character, and is mentioned by other people besides Loch.
From Loch’s description, the Bushire Residency, where he
stayed so often during his two and a half years in the Gulf, was
built on the lines of many of the Company’s factories in India.
It resembled the buildings of that period which were painted by
the Daniells, uncle and nephew, who, in the first decade of the
19th century, published a set of pictures with the title: ‘Views of
Hindostan.’
I close to the sea shore. Passing through a gate ‘under a porch
The Residency was an oblong building about 200 to 300 yards
in length, outside the south-eastern corner of the town walls and

rather like a portcullis’, a zigzag passage led into a ‘neat court­
yard’. The zigzag passage at the entrance was a feature of all
buildings which might have to be defended, for a straight passage
into a courtyard would be less tenable in ease of an attack.
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