Page:Early English adventurers in the East (1917).djvu/61

Rh A single ship of 240 tons named the Tiger, and a pinnace, appropriately christened the Tiger's Whelp, comprised his "fleet." The whole might have been stowed away on the deck of a modern Atlantic liner without greatly disturbing the deck arrangements. It was formidable enough, however, to cause a good many heart-searchings in certain quarters when the news of its sailing from Cowes on December 5, 1604, reached the City of London, as it probably did a day or two later.

It is unnecessary to follow Michelborne through the various stages of his voyage to the East, which differed little from those which had preceded it.

We may take the story up on August 21, 1605, when the Tiger and her consort arrived in the vicinity of Bantam. The appearance at this point of native craft upon the sea seems to have suggested to Michelborne the opportunity for a little indiscriminate piracy. Two prows that were overhauled yielded nothing but a small quantity of rice. On boarding one of them, under the impression that the crew had escaped, two of the sailors from the Tiger were grievously wounded by two natives who were lying hidden and who, as soon as the Englishmen set foot in the craft, attacked them with their krises inflicting terrible injuries, thereafter leaping overboard and "swimming away like water spaniels." A day or two later a Bantam ship was overhauled and dismissed, apparently because she had on board nothing worth the taking. Still later a more promising capture was made in the shape of an Indian ship of some eighty tons, laden with a miscellaneous cargo. She was taken into Sillebar, a port in Sumatra, and ransacked with a fine disregard for all laws of right and justice. As no further opening for plunder appeared to offer, Michelborne