Seeing that the game was up, Hybati fled with thirty of his men, and was lucky in pushing off in the grab, unobserved by the enemy.  The winds, however, proving contrary, the vessel had been blown northward along the coast and then driven far out to sea.  With the breaking of the monsoon a violent squall had dismasted the grab and shattered her bulkhead; she was continually shipping water, and, as the sahib saw, was at the point of sinking when the English ship came up.

Such was the Maratha’s story, as by and by it became common property on board the Good Intent.  Of all the crew Desmond was perhaps the most interested.  To the others there was nothing novel in the sight of the Indians; but to him they stood for romance, the embodiment of all the tales he had heard and all the dreams he had dreamed of this wonderful country in the East.  He was now assured that he was actually within reach of his desired haven; and he hoped shortly to see an end of the disappointments and hardships, the toils and distresses, of the past seven months.

He was eager to learn more of these Marathas, and their fortress, and the circumstances of the recent fight.  Bulger was willing to tell all he knew; but his information was not very exact, and Desmond did not hear the full story till long after.

The Malabar coast had long been the haunt of Maratha pirates, who interfered greatly with the native trade between India and Arabia and Persia.  In defense of the interests of his Mohammedan subjects the Mogul emperor at length, in the early part of the eighteenth century, fitted out a fleet, under the command of an admiral known as the Sidi.  But there happened to be among the Marathas at that time a warrior of great daring and resource, one Kunaji Angria.  This man first defeated the Sidi, then, in the insolence of victory, revolted against his own sovereign, and set up as an independent ruler.

By means of a well-equipped fleet of grabs and gallivats he made himself master of place after place along the coast, including the Maratha fortress at Suwarndrug and the Portuguese fort of Gheria.  His successors, who adopted in turn the dynastic name of Angria, followed up Kunaji’s conquest, until by the year 1750 the ruling Angria was in possession of a strip of territory on the mainland a hundred and eighty miles long and about forty broad, together with many small adjacent islands.

For the defense of this little piratical state Angria’s Marathas constructed a number of forts, choosing admirable positions and displaying no small measure of engineering skill.  From these strongholds they made depredations by sea and land, not only upon their native neighbors, but also upon the European traders, English, Dutch, and Portuguese; swooping down on unprotected merchant vessels and even presuming to attack warships.  Several expeditions had been directed against them, but always in vain; and when in 1754 the chief of that date, Tulaji Angria, known to Europeans as the Pirate, burnt two large Dutch vessels of fifty and thirty-six guns respectively, and captured a smaller one of eighteen guns, he boasted in his elation that he would soon be master of the Indian seas.