Page 116 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

never been carried out by the Joasnii. Captain Conyers who
commanded the Mercury and brought the Shaikh’s letter to Loch,
was considered somewhat to have exceeded his instructions in the
negotiations about the arrangements for the exchange of prisoners.
The time for lenity was past at last, after years of indecision, which
had cost the lives of many seamen in the Gulf, the Bombay
Government was taking a strong line and showing a determina­
tion to put an end to piracy. The flimsy, impudent excuses of the
Joasmi Shaikh were ignored.
It was during this visit that Loch met a young Frenchman who,
under the name of Abdul Rahman, arrived at Bushirc from Basra
in a European ship. He was only fourteen years old, when a ship
in which he was travelling from Mauritius to Basra was captured
by pirates. All those on board, except this boy and another lad,
were brutally massacred. The two French boys were spared on
condition that they became Moslems and joined the Wahabi sect.
This they did, and for some years, they lived with the pirates at
Ras al Khaima, where Abdul Rahman married two wives and
produced a family. ‘Yet he could not brook the degradation of
living with these people, and made his escape’, travelling up the
coast, sometimes on foot, and sometimes getting a lift in small
coasting craft.
For some time, he worked as interpreter for the Navy at Muscat
and, after the capture of Ras al Khaima, was made ‘Beach Sarong’,
being responsible for dealing with complaints from boat owners,
embarkation, and the landing of supplies. Loch says: ‘it is strange
that, in spite of the feelings of disgust which he had for the pirates,
which were so strong as to make him desert not only them, but
his wives and children, yet, after mixing again with Europeans,
he found his ideas and maimers so changed that he could not be
persuaded to return to his home.’ He was nineteen years old
when Loch met him, ‘a remarkably fine athlete, six feet tall, and
in Arab clothes he appeared a giant. He had a constant smile on
his countenance, and retained all the vivacity of his countrymen,
yet his gestures were modulated into those of an Arab.’ His face
and hands were white, but he stained his hands with henna, and
darkened his eyebrows and eyelashes with antimony.
In the beginning of April, Loch went on an expedition inland
with Bruce and Major Littlefield; the latter was staying at the
Residency inspecting the horses which had been bought for the
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