Pirate Tales by E.W. Farnsworth

Author:E.W. Farnsworth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: pirates, sea adventures, treasure, seven seas
Publisher: Zimbell House Publishing

Chapter Six

Pirates of Arabia

I know of no waters like those of the vast Persian Gulf. Aquatic life is so abundant from the surface in almost indistinguishable layers right to the depths, where fish play among colorful coral formations visible from the surface.

The ships Night Lightning and Sweet Cutlass had taken prizes in those waters and in the Arabian Sea that lay to the south of them for just over one month. We focused first on the outbound traffic from the Sultanate of Oman, but gradually our emphasis shifted to preying upon the much more lucrative trade of the pirates along the southern gulf coast.

Those pirates ran gold from a certain sheikdom to India, which could never seem to get enough of the yellow metal. In this congenial gulf sheikdom a finite amount of gold and silver bought refuge and, more importantly, loose women and liquor. We pirates could and did for a while gain intelligence and feast upon the international shipping vessels from all over the world. We also had rum and women whenever we liked and a steady stream of actionable intelligence from an unlikely source.

I found living among believers in Islam pleasant only when we had an understanding with the local authorities that allowed us to do whatever we wanted.

For sufficient treasure in our sheikdom we became immune to religious strictures because our sponsors and protectors sheltered us from them. While they beat, maimed or killed their own believers for minor infractions, they left us alone for gold. In the right sheikdom with the right arrangement, we could also repair our ships and get some needed rest and relaxation between our marauding efforts in the gulf and the sea that otherwise would have been impossible for pirates without patronage.

When we arrived, we had no contacts that mattered in the Persian Gulf, and we had arrived here by traveling the long way around from Zanzibar Island. We followed the heavily trafficked sea-lanes through the Indian Ocean, taking our prizes all the way from Zanzibar to Oman.

We then checked out that Omani sultanate, since it was closely connected to the slave trade of Zanzibar as well as all of Arabia. We saw many wondrous things in our voyage, such as sea serpents grey in color as smooth as polished brass and as long as our ship the Night Lightning, the cold fire that lit up all the masts like lightning at night or the phosphor.

Of these three phenomena the phosphor was the most mysterious and fatal to my hearties. Our entire time in the magical realm of Arabia was like the night the phosphor came, and I should have taken it as the warning that it was, but I was naïve and blind to the consequences of its secret message.

According to the Night Lightning’s log, my ship entered the cloud of phosphorescence around midnight on the 31st of October in the Arabian Sea well south of Oman. The white, fog-like substance permeated the exterior and interior spaces of the Night Lightning, and you could feel a tension all over the ship.

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