that they need no more fear." Owing probably to Jourdain's representations the men were recalled to the ships, and on July 26 they departed for India.
News was long in reaching England from India in those days, and it was doubtless in entire ignorance of the treatment accorded to Sharpeigh that the imposing fleet under Sir Henry Middleton was directed to make the development of the Aden and Arabian trade its first work in the East. November, 1610, found the ships safely at anchor in Aden harbour. The visitors, like their predecessors, were not prepossessed with the outlook. It seemed to their minus, vividly coloured with the impressions of the Homeland, to be a ghastly Ultima Thule upon which the spirits of Destiny had placed an irrevocable ban of infertility. Signs of habitation they could see none, apart from a few buildings near the shore. Everywhere the eye ranged over a black expanse of brown rock, rising precipitously in places to fantastically-shaped pinnacles whose outlines were sharply defined in the glare of the tropical sunlight. Stretching away to the North until its rocky ridges were lost in the shimmering haze was a coastline as desolate and forbidding as the rest, with no indication that human life found support anywhere in its vicinity. But the explanation of the mystery was soon forthcoming to the visitors. They discovered that the settlement was situated in a hollow at the foot of "an unfruitfull mountain," where a town could hardly have been suspected to exist. Like Sharpeigh's men they were struck with the natural strength of the place, which they considered was "not easily to be won, if the defenders within be men of resolution."
Since the visit of the Ascension and her consort, Rejib Aga had been promoted to the position of governor of
