We caught a great quantity of fine fish this night with a line, some of them weighing 14 pounds. The best were blue in the back, like a salmon, but their belly red, and marked with blue round spots. They resembled a salmon in shape, but the fish was white, and not so firm.
In the morning of the 6th we made the Jaffateen Islands. They are four in number, joined by shoals and sunken rocks. They are crooked, or bent, like half a bow, and are dangerous for ships sailing in the night, because there seems to be a passage between them, to which, when pilots are attending, they neglect two small dangerous sunk rocks, that lie almost in the middle of the entrance, in deep water.
I understood, afterwards, from the Rais, that, had it not been from some marks he saw of blowing weather, he would not have come in to the Jaffateen Islands, but stood directly for Tor, running between the island Sheduan, and a rock which is in the middle of the channel, after you pass Ras Mahomet. But we lay so perfectly quiet, the whole night, that we could not but be grateful to the Rais for his care, although we had seen no apparent reason for it.
Next morning, the 7th, we left our very quiet birth in the bay, and stood close, nearly south-east, along-side of the two southernmost Jaffateen Islands, our head upon the center of Sheduan, till we had cleared the eastermost of those islands about three miles. We then passed Sheduan, leaving it to the eastward about three leagues, and keeping nearly a N. N. W. course, to range the west side of Jibbel Zeit. This is a large desert island, or rock, that is about four miles from the main.
