Our Rais, above all, was seized with a panic; his country was just adjoining to Mascatte upon the Indian Ocean, and they were generally at war. He said he knew well who they were, that there was no country kept in better order than Mascatte; but that these were a set of pirates, belonging to the Bahareen; that their vessels were stout, full of men, who carried incense to Jidda, and up as far as Madagascar; that they feared no man, and loved no man, only were true to their employers for the time. He imagined (I suppose it was but imagination,) that he had seen a vessel in
the morning, (a lug-sail vessel, as the pirate was described to be,) and it was with difficulty we could prevail on the Rais not to sail back to Jidda. I took my leave of the Emir to return to my tent, to hold a consultation what was to be done.
Konfodah is in the lat. 19° 7' North. It is one of the most unwholesome parts on the Red Sea, provision is very dear and bad, and the water, (contrary to what the Emir had told me) execrable. Goats flesh is the only meat, and that very dear and lean. The anchorage, from the castle, bears north-west a quarter of a mile distant, from ten to seven fathoms, in sand and mud.
On the 14th, our Rais, more afraid of dying by a fever than by the hands of the pirates, consented willingly to put to sea. The Emir's good dinners had not extended to the boat's crew, and they had been upon short commons. The Rais's fever had returned since he left Jidda, and I gave him some doses of bark, after which he soon recovered. But he was always complaining of hunger, which the black flesh of an old goat, the Emir had given us, did not satisfy. WE
