Off the coast of Malabar, Bowen nearly had to sober up, for he was come to his proper fishing grounds. Up and down this roadstead passed much of the commerce of the East Indies. Quite a medley it was, to be sure. There were craft from the ten-ton sloop belonging to a petty local merchant, up through increasing tonnage chartered by Moors, Persians, Armenians, Hindoos, to the two-and three-decker so-called East Indiaman, the ship of the august and imperial East India Company itself. In disturbing this traffic captain William Kidd had found a fortune in less than six months, and numerous pirates of many nations had here easily enriched themselves. Captain Bowen, who must have been something of a joker as were so many of his outlaw colleagues, doubtless enjoyed immensely taking a ship with the name of _Prosperous_, which he did shortly after his entry into Indian waters proper. With a chuckle he realized that he had made the owners of the _Content_ discontented; he intended the _Speedy Return_ should go home neither slowly nor speedily, and it is very likely that he put the charterers of the _Prosperous_ into bankruptcy. It might have been of a better omen in those days to name your ship the very opposite to your hopes; say call the _Content_ the _Dissatisfied_; the _Speedy Return_ the _Never Come Back_ and the _Prosperous_, _Hard Times_,--in which case a marauding pirate would at least lose the dramatic pleasure of surprise. Having bagged the _Prosperous_, Bowen put a crew on board and used her for an auxiliary, and with this augmented command in a few months, according to Weoley, he took “six sail of ship” and “hundreds ruined.” The last of these six ships was one from Surat, evidently of considerable size, for Bowen transferred all hands to her and then, being as drunk as a fool, entertained the amazed city of Rajapore with a grand nautical bonfire made up both of the _Prosperous_ and the _Speedy Return_. How uneasily the stockholders of the Scotch Indian-African trading company would have turned in their beds had that lurid light gleamed against their far-off window panes! This man Bowen was an incorrigible ship burner, which proves that he had not the heart of a true sailorman or the first instincts of a real conqueror of the sea. On this captured Surat ship, when Bowen got over his pyrotechnic spree, he counted up his men and found, so Weoley records, “70 Lascars (native of India) and 146 fighting men (the Lascars being used as sailors) of which part are 43 English, the better part of the company French, the rest Negroes (our Jamaica friends), Dutch and other nations that cries ‘yaw’.” Quaint foible! Amid all his sufferings poor Captain Weoley could still find a feeling of irritation for men that “cries ‘yaw’” instead of “yes.”