This dreadful man, Ramah ibn Java, the beau ideal of his order, the personation of an Arab sea robber, was a native of a small village near Jiddah.  At an early period he commenced a mode of life congenial to his disposition and nature.  Purchasing a boat, he, with a band of about twelve companions, commenced his career as a pirate, and in the course of a few months he had been so successful that he became the owner of a vessel of three hundred tons, and manned with a lawless crew.  It was a part of his system to leave British vessels unmolested, and he even affected to be on good terms with them.  We have heard an old officer describe his appearance.  He was then about forty-five years of age, short in stature, but with a figure compact and square, a constitution vigorous, and the characteristic qualities of his countrymen—­frugality, and patience of fatigue.  Several scars already seamed his face, and the bone of his arm had been shattered by a matchlock ball when boarding a vessel.  It is a remarkable fact that the intermediate bones sloughed away, and the arm, connected only by flesh and muscle, was still, by means of a silver tube affixed around it, capable of exertion.

Ramah was born to be the leader of the wild spirits around him.  With a sternness of purpose that awed those who were near him into a degree of dread, which totally astonished those who had been accustomed to view the terms of equality in which the Arab chiefs appear with their followers, he exacted the most implicit obedience to his will; and the manner in which he acted toward his son exhibits the length he was disposed to go with those who thwarted, or did not act up to, the spirit of his views.  The young man, then a mere stripling, had been dispatched to attack some boats, but he was unsuccessful.  “This, dastard, and son of a dog!” said the enraged father, who had been watching the progress of the affair, “you return unharmed to tell me!  Fling him over the side!” The chief was obeyed; and but for a boat, which by some chance was passing some miles astern, he would have been drowned.  Of his existence the father for many months was wholly unconscious, and how he was reconciled we never heard; but during the interval he was never known to utter his name.  No cause, it appears, existed for a repetition of the punishment; for while yet a youth, he met the death his father would have most coveted for him.  He fell at the head of a party that was bravely storming a fort.

Many other acts of cruelty are related of him.  Having seized a small trading boat, he plundered her, and then fastened the crew—­five in number—­round the anchor, suspended it from the bows, cut the cable, and let the anchor, with its living burden, sink to the bottom.  He once attacked a small town on the Persian Gulf.  In this town lived one Abder Russel, a personal friend of the narrator, who related the visit of the pirates to his dwelling.  Seized with a violent illness, he was stretched on a pallet