Leaving Bab’s Key, the _Adventure Galley_ stood back across the Arabian Sea and cruised again along the coast of Malabar, the only coast on which there is the slightest suggestion that Kidd ever committed any act of piracy. In considering his doings and those of his men here, and the construction placed on them first by the East India Company, and afterwards by the prosecution at his trial, several things must be borne in mind. At that time there were in India not only English, but Portuguese and French factories. Little love was lost between them, and there was open war between England and France. English and American pirates had been for some time past preying on the coast trade, and the _Adventure Galley_ might very reasonably be mistaken for a pirate by any ship which she chased. The coast trade was carried on mainly in vessels manned by Asiatics with, in some cases, two or three Europeans on board. The wily Indian had by this time learned the advantage of carrying Europeans of more than one nationality in each ship, so that if caught by a ship carrying French colours, he might produce a Frenchman as the owner, and if caught by an English ship an Englishman. It was Kidd’s plain duty to take as prizes any French vessels he came across, and with that end in view to examine carefully every ship which he had reason to suspect was French. He knew very little of the coast or of the Eastern languages, and stood greatly in need of a pilot and an interpreter, or, as he was then termed by seamen, a “linguister.” His crew were becoming unruly, and whenever he left his ship to examine personally any suspected prize, he ran the risk of their putting to sea and leaving him in the lurch. The first vessel he was accused at his trial of having plundered was a small one, of little value, manned by Armenians, with two Europeans on board, an Englishman and a Portuguese. He engaged the Englishman as a pilot and the Portuguese as a “linguister.” There is no reason to doubt that both these men were thankful to get on board a European ship again and to join his ship’s company, as others in similar circumstances admittedly did afterwards.