Bowen steered from Rajapore down along the Malabar coast until he came to Cochin, a Portuguese settlement and where a miscalled Portuguese war fleet made its anchorage. Those old sieves were the local maritime joke, and a brisk pirate would think little of using them for mooring buoys. This aggregation had once gone out after the formidable Captain Kidd and much to its surprise and pain had found him. It had never been known to attempt anything notable since. Certainly, they did not trouble John Bowen. As Bowen dawdled along in these parts, touching at this and that small port for frolic or land robbery or both, “about three leagues to the northward of Cochin” Weoley states that “I got clear of the pirates.” Thus ended the worst seven months in the life of that worthy mariner. What became of Bowen after Weoley escaped from him we do not know, at least so far as the authentic record we are consulting is concerned. Probably he met the violent end of his ilk; one thing is sure, however; he was never hanged for the piracy of the _Speedy Return_, but--and this makes the dread, dark sequel of the crime--another man who knew not Bowen, Robert Drummond or the ill-fated ship _Speedy Return_ suffered by one of the most notable miscarriages of justice known to the law as the murderer of Captain Drummond and the pirate of the _Speedy Return_. II On March 8, 1702, a ship called the _Worcester_ weighed anchor in the Downs and so began the long voyage from England to India. Perhaps on that very day, certainly within a very few days of that date, the brigantine _Content_ was burning to the edge of the waters of a Madagascar bay, and her consort from Scotland, the _Speedy Return_ was romping toward the Comoro Islands beneath the stern and unlawful drive of a sea brigand. The purpose of the _Worcester_ in the East Indies was to trade, though she did not belong to the East India Company but appears to have been owned by a small group of investors, probably retired sea captains for the most part. To get a swift idea of what was meant by the East-India trade you have only to recall the Hudson’s Bay Company in Canada, for the methods of both these great trading corporations were practically the same. Just as the Canadian company stalked across Canada from fort to fort, so the India company ringed the coast of India with forts, which, like the Canadians, they called “factories” and put in charge of an officer termed a factor. Both companies held exclusive monopolies in their respective regions by virtue of government grants; both maintained fleets for the exportation of native products and the importation of English wares and supplies. Each had to meet a certain amount of competition in spite of its exclusive privileges.