Page 93 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

ing her in its arms.’ Then the wind suddenly fell, and the ship
was able to escape from the Eden by using her oars in the calm
which ensued.
One of the three prisoners who were brought from the shore
had poisoned himself and died soon after coming on board: Loch
says ‘his corpse turned a pale, livid green’. The other man, too,
tried to kill himself, and was found half suffocated, having stuffed
a quantity of tow down his throat, which much amused the
boatswain’s mate ‘who rolled out “damn my eyes! Here’s a
bloody fellow who’s been caulking up his throat with oakum” ’.
The oakum was removed, and the attempted suicide soon re­
covered. The third person, a boy, had been wounded by gun­
shot, his wounds were dressed, and by the time the Eden reached
Ras al Khaima, lie was well enough to go ashore. Besides the
old man and the boy, there were two other pirate lads in the Eden
who had been captured in a previous engagement; being young,
they were not sent to Bombay as prisoners. Loch says that ‘from
their treatment by the seamen, they had become almost part of
ourselves’.
Loch decided to drop the old man and the three boys at Ras al
Khaima. His object in doing this was to let the pirates know
about the success of the British ships in other parts of the Gulf.
He told the prisoners, before putting them ashore, to inform their
Chief that ‘if any persons in his power were inhumanely butchered,
or any further barbarities were practised against British subjects,
then the fate of the Joasmi prisoners who had been sent to Bombay
would depend on its Government’. Though Loch knew that he
had no grounds for threatening retaliation against the prisoners,
he thought that his warning might have a salutary effect. He
evidently believed that his words had been effective, for he says
that ‘afterwards I had the inexpressible delight of knowing that,
in consequence of the mode I took of landing these people, and
the information transmitted through them, not one subject of the
British, cither English or Indian, suffered death from the Joasmi
in cold blood’. It is more likely that the Joasmi would have been
afraid of reprisals from the British ships in the Gulf, than of
threats against their prisoners in Bombay.
The Eden crossed the Gulf again to Ras al Khaima, where the
three lads and the old man were put ashore in a boat which had
been taken from the pirates at Kishm. The two boys, who had
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