fort and at the
Sheikh's house. The women and children to the number of four hundred,
were at the same time collected together in a place of security, and
sent on board the fleet, together with the men. The service has been
short but arduous; the enemy defended themselves with great obstinacy
and ability worthy of a better cause.

From two prisoners retaken from the Joassamees, they learnt that the
plunder is made a general stock, and distributed by the chief, but in
what proportions the deponents cannot say; water is generally very
scarce. There is a quantity of fish caught on the bank, upon which and
dates they live. There were a few horses, camels, cows, sheep, and
goats; the greatest part of which they took with them; they were in
general lean, as the sandy plain produces little or no vegetation,
except a few dates and cocoa-nut trees. The pirates who abandoned
Ras-el-Khyma, encamped about three miles in the interior, ready to
retreat into the desert at a moment's warning. The Sheikh of Rumps is an
old man, but looks intelligent, and is said to be the man who advises
upon all occasions the movements of the different tribes of pirates on
the coast, and when he was told that it was the wish of the Company to
put a stop to their piracy, and make an honest people of them by
encouraging them to trade, seemed to regret much that those intentions
were not made known, as they would have been most readily embraced.
Rumps is the key to Ras-el-Khyma, and by its strength is defended from a
strong banditti infesting the mountains, as also the Bedouin Arabs who
are their enemies. A British garrison of twelve hundred men was
stationed at Ras-el-Khyma, and a guard-ship. The other places sent in
tokens of submission, as driven out of their fortresses on the margin of
the sea, they had to contend within with the interior hostile tribes.

[Illustration: _The Pirate Stronghold._]

THE BARBAROUS CONDUCT AND ROMANTIC DEATH OF THE
JOASSAMEE CHIEF, RAHMAH-BEN-JABIR.

The town of Bushire, on the Persian Gulf is seated in a low peninsula of
sand, extending out of the general line of the coast, so as to form a
bay on both sides. One of these bays was in 1816, occupied by the fleet
of a certain Arab, named Rahmah-ben-Jabir, who has been for more than
twenty years the terror of the gulf, and who was the most successful and
the most generally tolerated pirate, perhaps, that ever infested any
sea. This man by birth was a native of Gra