But a term was about to be put to his insolence and his depredations.  On March twenty-second, 1755, Commodore William James, commander of the East India Company’s marine force, set sail from Bombay in the Protector of forty-four guns, with the Swallow of sixteen guns, and two bomb vessels.  With the assistance of a Maratha fleet he had attacked the island fortress of Suwarndrug, and captured it, as Hybati had related.  A few days afterwards another of the Pirate’s fortresses, the island of Bancoote, six miles north of Suwarndrug, surrendered.  The Maratha rajah, Ramaji Punt, delighted with these successes against fortified places which had for nearly fifty years been deemed impregnable, offered the English commodore an immense sum of money to proceed against others of Angria’s forts; but the monsoon approaching, the commodore was recalled to Bombay.

The spot at which the Good Intent had fallen in with the sinking grab was about eighty miles from the Indian coast, and Captain Barker expected to sight land next day.  No one was more delighted at the prospect than Desmond.  Leaving out of account the miseries of the long voyage, he felt that now he was within reach of the goal of his hopes.  The future was all uncertain; he was no longer inclined to trust his fortunes to Diggle, for though he could not believe that the man had deliberately practised against his life, he had with good reason lost confidence in him, and what he had learned from Bulger threw a new light on his past career.

One thing puzzled him.  If the Pirate was such a terror to unprotected ships, and strong enough to attack several armed vessels at once, why was Captain Barker running into the very jaws of the enemy?  In her palmy days as an East Indiaman the Good Intent had carried a dozen nine-pounders on her upper deck and six on the quarterdeck; and Bulger had said that under a stout captain she had once beaten off near Surat half a dozen three-masted grabs and a score of gallivats from the pirate stronghold at Gheria.  But now she had only half a dozen guns all told, and even had she possessed the full armament there were not men enough to work them, for her complement of forty men was only half what it had been when she sailed under the Company’s flag.

Desmond confided his puzzlement to Bulger.  The seaman laughed.

“Why, bless ‘ee, we en’t a-goin’ to run into no danger.  Trust Cap’n Barker for that.  You en’t supercargo, to be sure; but who do you think them guns and round shots in the hold be for?  Why, the Pirate himself.  And he’ll pay a good price for ’em, too.”

“Do you mean to say that English merchants supply Angria with weapons to fight against their own countrymen?”

“Well, blest if you en’t a innocent.  In course they do.  The guns en’t always fust-class metal, to be sure; but what’s the odds?  The interlopers ha’ got to live.”

“I don’t call that right.  It’s not patriotic.”