The English company--taking it as illustrative--lined the Indian coast with its forts or factories, and built its own vessels, the noted “Indiamen”, at its home docks at Deptford; fought its rivals, fought the natives, carried on perpetual war under the banner of trade. Protected to the point of complete monopoly by royal and parliamentary charters, it became practically a State itself, with the power of minting money, maintaining forts and armies, negotiating treaties, declaring war or making peace, and authorized to send its ships out beneath the royal ensign, commanded by captains every one of whom was the king’s commissioned officer. Although ships of many flags plied in the commerce of the East Indies, if you were aboard a larger Moorish, Arabian or Armenian vessel, you would often have heard the working of it directed by the bellowings of a Devonian, a Londoner, or a burr-tongued Yorkshireman. And if from the lookout there came the cry of “Pirate!” you could be just as sure that that swiftly oncoming menace was driven by a man who called in English to a crew which needed no interpreter. This varied coast and trans-oceanic sea traffic was almost without police protection. At their settlement up Calicut way, the Portuguese had a few ineffective tubs they called a navy. In India itself the one-time vigorous rule of the Moguls was collapsing and anarchy was slipping from beneath the lid. Yet even as government caved in, commerce hardily struggled on, in spite of the fact that its voyages began in fear and ended by good fortune, and its ships too often became fat, unshepherded sheep for lean and unlawful shearers. And the shearers--Tom Too _et al._--came; came in hordes; came from anywhere and everywhere, chiefly from across the Atlantic, New York, New England and their historic nest, the West Indies. The lay of the land as well as of the water made against the merchant and for the brigand. Once in the neighborhood, a thieving craft could steal up a river and wait its opportunity, comfortably provided with wood and water. Madagascar was the despair of the English Admiralty and the bitter wail of merchants great and small. It was the prime way station for pirates on their way to and from the Indies; it was a land without law, governed by warring native chieftains, and with the Comoro Islands close by, made one of the finest strategic bases imaginable for piratical operations. There the pirates swarmed, careened their ships, salted their provisions, established regular colonies, and exchanged from one ship to another, leaving or signing-up quite after the manner of legitimate ports. It was the West Indies of the Indian Ocean. To strike piracy down in Madagascar and India was to weaken its blow both at the American colonies and the Spanish Main. To India Kidd knew he must resort to enforce the terms of his commission.