sail towards her, which she perceiving, got under weigh for Aden.  Between nine and ten, by firing a shot, she struck her top-sails, and sent her boat to us, saying she belonged to the Zamorin, or King of Calicut, whence they had been forty days.  The nakhada, or commander of this ship, was Abraham Abba Zeinda,[361] and her cargo, according to their information, consisted of tamarisk,[362] three tons; rice, 2300 quintals; jagara, or brown sugar, forty bahars; cardamoms, seven bahars; dried ginger, four and a half quintals; pepper, one and a half ton; cotton, thirty-one bales, each containing five or six maunds.  Her crew and passengers consisted of seventy-five persons, of whom twenty were appointed to bale out water and for other purposes below, eight for the helm, four for top and yard and other business aloft, and twenty boys for dressing the provisions, all the rest being merchants and pilgrims.  Her burden was 140 tons.  Having carefully examined them, and finding they belonged to a place which had never wronged our nation, I only took out two tons of water, with their own permission, and dismissed them, giving them strict injunctions not to go to Aden, or I would sink their ship.  So they made sail, standing farther out from the land, but going to leewards, we were forced to stand off and on all day and night, lest in the night she might slip into Aden.

[Footnote 361:  Perhaps rather Ibrahim Abu Zeynda, or Sinda.—­Astl.  I. 421. b.]

[Footnote 362:  Probably turmeric.—­E.]

Every ship we saw, before we could come to speak them, had advice sent by the governor of Aden to inform them of us.  When the Calicut ship was under our command, the governor sent off a boat, manned with Arabs, having on board two Turkish soldiers of the garrison, who had formerly been instruments of Abdal Rahman[363] aga, to bind and torture our men whom they had betrayed.  On seeing our men, whom they had used so ill, they were in great doubt what usage they might now receive, as their guilty conscience told them they merited no good treatment at our hands.  They brought some fruit to sell, and, I suppose, came as spies to see what we were doing.  At the first sight of our men, whom they knew, they would fain have put off their boat again, but I would not permit them, causing them to be reminded of their former behaviour to our men, when in their hands; and when I thought them sufficiently terrified, I ordered them to be told, that they should now see how far our nation differed from the cruelty of Turks, who had most barbarously and injuriously used our men, without giving any cause of offence, whom they had betrayed by fair promises, yet I should now dismiss them without harm.  They immediately departed, making many fair promises of sending us refreshments.  They accordingly sent off next day a boat loaded with fish; but we were too far off for them to reach us, as we were obliged to put the Calicut ship to leeward towards the Red Sea.