[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 Grain, on the opposite coast, and
nephew of the governor of that place. His fellow citizens had all the
honesty, however, to declare him an outlaw, from abhorrence of his
profession; but he found that aid and protection at Bushire, which his
own townsmen denied him. With five or six vessels, most of which were
very large, and manned with crews of from two to three hundred each, he
sallied forth, and captured whatever he thought himself strong enough to
carry off as a prize. His followers, to the number of two thousand, were
maintained by the plunder of his prizes; and as the most of these were
his own bought African slaves, and the remainder equally subject to his
authority, he was sometimes as prodigal of their lives in a fit of anger
as he was of his enemies, whom he was not content to slay in battle
only, but basely murdered in cold blood, after they had submitted. An
instance is related of his having put a great number of his own crew,
who used mutinous expressions, into a tank on board, in which they