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264
SHIVAJI.
[ch. X.


and make him pay what he was pleased to represent as "monies due to the Company." A part of the amount was immediately paid in goods. But just then Shivaji's horsemen appeared on the bank to seize the junks of Afzal Khan and called upon the English to give up the one in which the governor was. The English declined, and the governor gladly seized this device for escaping capture by the Marathas and urged the English "to take possession of two of these junks and own them." Mr. Revington took one of the vessels over, renamed it the Rajapur Merchant, and placed it under an English captain.

In a parley with Doroji, the Maratha general, the English refused to give up the goods in the junk unless he gave them an order on the revenue of the town for the money claimed by them. The largest junk, which had not been taken over by the English, weighed anchor and fell down the creek to beyond the range of the Maratha guns, after firing on Shiva's men on both banks. At this disappointment, the Marathas seized the English brokers, Baghji and Balji, at Jaitapur (at the mouth of the creek, 11 miles west of Rajapur), on the ground that "the English would not take the junk for them, but let her go." (Ibid; also Surat Council to Company, 6 April 1660, F. R. Surat, Vol. 85.)

Mr. Philip Gyffard was sent to the Maratha camp to demand the release of the brokers, but they seized him too, and carried away the three prisoners