Page:Early English adventurers in the East (1917).djvu/98

 men were greatly in need of rest and fresh food, Sharpeigh decided to make a brief stay at the islands. It was a happy decision in every way, as events proved, for though the group at that time appears to have been uninhabited, there were obtainable ample supphes of nourishing food and fruit—amongst the latter the famous coco-de-mer, or double coco-nut, which is found nowhere else in the tropics. It is this fruit which in after years Gordon rendered famous by propagation of his singular theory that it was the Forbidden Fruit and that it grew in the veritable Garden of Eden. Gordon probably was not acquainted with Jourdain's diary; if he had been he would have found some confirmation of his view in the terms in which this estimable sailor referred to the sojourn at the Seychelles. "These islands," Jourdain wrote enthusiastically," seemed to us an earthly paradise." He spoke no more than the sentiments of a mariner who after suffering the buffetings and hardships of the ocean finds peace and content in a safe haven; but the hero of Khartoum would probably have read into the passage a deeper significance.

When the Ascension and the Union left the Seychelles they proceeded to Socotra, a savage, inhospitable land, whose Eastern outlines are fairly familiar to voyagers who proceed viâ the Red Sea to the Far East and to Australia. As up to that period no English ship had ever visited the country, the visitors created a considerable sensation. The captain of an Indian craft in harbour at the time found the presence of the English ships so disconcerting that he surreptitiously left the anchorage and put to sea. Sharpeigh, however, wanted a pilot so badly that he could not afford to allow this opportunity of securing expert assistance to pass. By his orders, therefore, the boat was