Читать книгу Gunboat and Gun-runner: A Tale of the Persian Gulf - T. T. Jeans - Страница 10

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Two days later we arrived at Aden, and found the Intrepid anchored close to Steamer Point, looking cool and comfortable under her white awnings and white paint. The officer of the "guard", coming across for her mails, took the Baron and myself back with him.

As skipper of the Bunder Abbas I felt a somewhat important personage, but Commander Duckworth, the captain of the Intrepid, a short, red-faced, wiry man, full of energy, soon disabused me about that.

It was terrifically hot in his cabin, and he was not in any mood for talking.

"Eh, yes, Martin—you are Martin, are you?—so you've come to take poor Collingwood's job. I won't shake hands—too hot. Well, passages have been booked for you and your gunner in that steamer," pointing to a disreputable little steamer I could see through the gun port. "She leaves to-morrow morning at daylight. You will go aboard her to-night. We lent Wilson, one of our fellows, to the Bunder Abbas, until you came. You'll find him at Jask—only too anxious to see you, I expect. You'll take her over from him, and the boss at the telegraph station—a kind of political agent—will pass on any orders to you. You are, more or less, lent to the Indian Government, you know."

I did not know, but that was nothing.

His letters were brought in then, and he nodded for me to leave. However, I was so fearfully keen to learn more that I blurted out:

"Any chance of picking up a dhow or anything like that, sir?"

"Of course there is always a chance," he said energetically. "Wilson will tell you all about everything: good morning!"

I went away to the ward-room, hoping to get more information there; but the place was a litter of newspapers, and everybody was busy reading letters and paid little attention to me.

"Bunder Abbas. What size is she?"

"Oh, about as big as that table!" was all that I could get out of them.

The Baron and I parted company that afternoon, when I went aboard the little steamer—the Ras-al-Musat. I found the gunner already there, and also that solitary little lady, with the yellow hair and humorous grey eyes—the little lady who had snubbed the fussy major—and me. She also was bound for Jask, of all places in the world, and, as at meal times she sat on the captain's right and I on his left hand, we had to talk. However, she was much more interested in Mr. Scarlett and his stories of Arabian life than in me.

At daybreak of the fifth morning we dropped anchor two miles off Jask, and I strained my eyes to catch a first glimpse of the Bunder Abbas, though in the hazy light I could not distinguish her amongst a cluster of dhows, anchored close inshore. All I could see was a wide sweep of yellow sand and a low-lying peninsula, jutting out into the sea, with some glaring white square buildings at its end.

The place—if it really was an inhabited place—seemed absolutely asleep, until, presently, some small, crazy lighters, full of jabbering natives, came slowly off to unload whatever cargo we had for them.

Half an hour later I spied a tiny little tub of a dinghy pulling our way. As she drew closer I saw that Wilson was in it. I had known him when he was a sub-lieutenant, and I met him at the gangway.

"Jolly glad to see you," he burst out. "Everything's all right aboard the B.A. I've ordered a chunk of goat for your breakfast—couldn't get anything else. I told the political chap, up at the telegraph station, that you'll be coming to see him. He will tell you anything you want to know. Here's the 'signal book' and the 'cruising order book'. Sign your 'tally' there. There are no more confidential books to hand over."

I signed the receipt for them.

"Now you're the skipper of the B.A. I've finished with her, thank Heaven! Griffiths, in the dinghy, can take you back now."

Having so satisfactorily (?) concluded the formalities of handing over command, Wilson took some letters which I had brought for him, and went off to read them. I presumed that he was going to Karachi to catch a steamer back to Aden, but did not take the trouble to ask him before the gunner and myself left the Ras-al-Musat.

If you had seen us being pulled inshore in that tiny dinghy to join my first command you would have laughed. The dinghy's stern was nearly level with the water, and her bows so cocked up in the air that Mr. Scarlett had to creep for'ard to "trim the dish".

As we gradually drew nearer the shore, I noticed a weird odour in the air.

"What's that?" I asked the bluejacket, sniffing it in.

"All them Arab or Persh'un places smell like that, sir," he said. "You'll not notice it in a week's time."

I sucked it in through my nose. At last I had come to the edge of things, and cut myself adrift from civilization. It was grand, and I felt as happy as a bird—and looked like one, too, I expect, perched as I was on the top of my two cases.

"That's 'er, sir," the bluejacket said presently, jerking his chin over his shoulder. Then I saw the Bunder Abbas for the first time. She and I were to have many exciting experiences together during the next few months.

As I saw her then she looked draggled to a degree. Her sides were a positive disgrace—paint off in large patches; her awnings were dirty and badly spread on bent, crazy-looking stanchions; and her rusty unpainted cable hung drearily out of a most disreputable hawse-pipe.

In her bows, under the awning, there was a gun, in a dirty canvas cover—a six-pounder I guessed—and aft two Maxims were cocked up at different angles, in the most slovenly manner. Their water-jackets, which should have been so bright, were painted a beastly mud colour, and from the muzzle of one dangled a bunch of green bananas.

"Your own mother won't know you in a week's time, my sweetheart," I chuckled to myself, as the bluejacket tugged at one oar and twisted the dinghy alongside.

I swung myself aboard, to be met by a bearded petty officer with a shifty, crafty face, who saluted me about a dozen times in the first two minutes. Five or six disreputable-looking sailors peered round the corner of the engine-room casings to take stock of me, and some lascars sitting jabbering round a stew-pot took no notice whatever.

I looked round. The deck was littered with rubbish; men's clothes were stretched on it everywhere—to dry; burnt matches and cigarette ends lay in every corner.

"We ain't scrubbed decks yet," the petty officer said, following my eye, his hand bobbing up and down to his forehead all the time. "Wouldn't you like to see the orficer's cabin, sir?" he added hastily, to distract my anger, and led me up a ladder, through an opening in the fore awning, to a platform round the mast and funnel. On this platform deck, for'ard of the mast, were the steering-wheel, compass, and engine-room telegraphs, also a tiny little signal-locker; aft of the funnel was a diminutive deck-house, about half the size of a railway compartment. It had a low bunk on each side, with scarcely room to stand between them, a few shelves, lockers under the bunks, and a cracked looking-glass. Overhead the paintwork was blackened by an oil lamp which swung from the roof and looked as if it had not been cleaned or trimmed for years.

Outside the cabin there was just enough deck space for a small folding table and a couple of canvas folding chairs.

"Them chairs belonged to Mr. Collingwood, what died of sunstroke, and the gunner, what went off 'un 'is 'ead," the petty officer explained.

I made a grimace.

"You'll 'ave a cup of corfee?" he asked, rubbing his hands together and smiling ingratiatingly as a dirty unkempt Indian boy (a Tamil I found out afterwards) brought two cups of horrid-looking coffee and a tin of condensed milk with milk congealed down one side of it. "Mr. Wilson 'as ordered your breakfast, and this 'ere boy—Percy we calls 'im—looks arter you two orficers."

Nothing seemed to stop his talking machine.

I snorted—it was the only way I could express my feelings—and looked round to see what had become of Mr. Scarlett, who had disappeared.

"What's your routine on board?" I asked, going down the ladder again to that six-pounder in the bows.

"We ain't exactly got none," the petty officer answered. "Mr. Collingwood, 'im what died of sunstroke, 'e didn't 'ave no regular routine—an' Mr. Wilson didn't alter nothing."

He said this in a half-fawning, half-defiant manner, as much as to say: "Don't you come making trouble."

Mr. Scarlett joined us, his black eyes gleaming, stepping through the little crowd of lascars and scattering them.

"They won't hang any more bananas on my guns," he chuckled.

I had heard a splash, so guessed what had happened, and smiled until that petty officer, hanging round to join in the conversation, explained that "They were a bunch Mr. Wilson bought yesterday, off a Karachi dhow, and 'ung 'em up there to get a bit ripe for you two orficers." He looked so cunningly pleased that I told him sharply to clear out of it and I'd send for him when I wanted him.

I smothered my anger, went up to the little cabin, and began to stow away as much of my belongings as I could cram into the two shallow drawers under the bunk, kicking out "Percy", who wanted to help. He did not seem to mind, and was back again in a minute. If he was dirty, he had a cheerful little face and a pair of big dog-like eyes. He pleaded with them so hard to be allowed to stay and help that I had not the heart to kick him out again.

That "chunk" of goat soon disappeared, once Mr. Scarlett and I settled down to breakfast. Whilst we were busy with it a European-built boat pulled past us from the steamer, with our little yellow-haired friend under the awnings. I almost felt inclined to wave to her, but, not wanting another snub, did not do so.

"I expect she's going to live at the telegraph station. She won't find many comforts in this place," Mr. Scarlett said grimly, pointing to the various square, white-faced buildings at the end of Jask peninsula.

Down on the low ground, where the peninsula joined the coast line, there was a neglected-looking red-brick building among some palm trees (Mr. Scarlett said it was a fort), and another, larger and more imposing, some little way inshore. With the exception of these there was precious little to see except sand-hills, a few scattered palm trees, and perhaps a hundred native huts dotted among them. We could see the track which led inland to the town of old Jask, though the town itself was not visible. On the horizon the misty outlines of barren mountains rose high into the burning sky. Even at this hour the sun was very fierce.

Presently that European boat came pulling off to the Bunder Abbas with a note for me from the Englishman in charge of the telegraph station—the acting political agent—asking me to breakfast with him and not to bother with formalities.

"Off you skip, sir," Mr. Scarlett advised me. "They calls their lunch 'breakfast'. I'd like to have a few kind words with the men whilst you are away." So on shore I went, landing on a broad, sandy beach, where crowds of Arabs or Persians, and niggers of sorts—every sort, I should fancy—were unloading those wretched lighters and some large dhows lying half out of water. Donkeys, as patient as donkeys are all the world over, and camels, as supercilious and discontented as they, too, always are, were being laden with bales of merchandise.

One of the boat's crew—a Zanzibar nigger he was—led me through them, away from the shore and the native huts, through a small grove of palm trees, where that old fort stood, and across an open cultivated space, sloping gently upwards towards the telegraph station. At the top of this was a double line of wire entanglements extending from side to side.

I opened my eyes as I saw these, and still more when he led me through some roughly-designed earthworks, evidently meant for protection. Then we came to the big barrack-like telegraph buildings themselves, with a line of iron telegraph posts running from them down the peninsula and then along the edge of the shore to the east'ard as far as my eye could see. My guide led me to a building surrounded by a strong stone wall, with loopholes through it, and at the entrance a short cheery man with a round red face and a scrubby, yellow moustache was waiting to welcome me.

He was the political agent—Fisher by name. He introduced me to his wife, who came out to join us—a tired-looking little woman—and on the veranda, in the shade, which we hurriedly sought, was my little lady friend from the steamer, talking to a tall, good-looking chap. The political agent explained that this was Borsen, his right-hand man, the only other European there, and that she, his sister, had come out to keep house for him and be some company for Mrs. Fisher.

"They are the only two women here, and it is very noble of them to come to such a place as this," he said, speaking as though it might be jolly unselfish of them but that he wished they were not there.

"What do you think of your new ship?" he asked, smiling.

"You won't know her in a month's time," I smiled back.

"Shan't have the chance," he answered. "I have a very pretty job for you along the coast—keep you busy for the next three months."

I brightened up and wanted to hear more; but the head "boy"—a "perfect" old chap in a yellow silk turban—announced breakfast, and until we had finished there was no chance of my learning.

Then Mr. Fisher took me into his work-room, brought out charts, and explained things to me.

"Look," he said, pointing to the Arabian coast at a place called Jeb, some forty miles to the north'ard of Muscat. "I have information that several thousand rifles have been brought down there. The Arabs will be bringing them across at the first opportunity, and it was only yesterday that I heard that camels are being collected in two villages not far from here. It is fairly certain that somewhere between those two villages they mean to land them. You see that headland jutting out—look—close to Kuh-i-Mubarak—thirty miles to the west'ard. There are two creeks; one just to the south'ard of it, the other about eleven miles to the north'ard. They are favourite places for landing arms, and those camels—a hundred or more—are somewhere close by.

"The chart does not show it properly. I'll draw you a rough sketch-map."

He drew a sketch and explained it. A hill named Sheikh Hill (there was a sheikh's house or fort on its summit) and the cliffs opposite it made an anchorage safe from any wind, but the creek leading from a little inlet past the village of Bungi (where half those camels had been collected) was very shallow indeed.

South of Sheikh Hill—eleven miles south—there was deep water right up to the shore under Kuh-i-Mubarak, and the creek there was deep, winding among sand-hills until it opened out into a "khor" or basin, with the village of Sudab on its edge. Here was the remainder of the camels.

The two creeks—the shallow one to the north and the deep one to the south—were connected up at the back of the sand-hills and behind the two villages by a channel some thirty yards broad, but so shallow that only at high water could even the native boats use it.

Behind all, some eleven miles inland, the Persian mountains towered up, and passes between them led to the desert table-lands behind.

"The track to Baluchistan and the north-west frontier of India lies across those table-lands," Mr. Fisher said, making a groove with his finger nail. "I want you to patrol from one creek to another, examining every dhow which comes along. I hope you will have luck. Remember that if a 'shamel' blows, the dhows will probably be driven south and make for the deep creek at the base of Mubarak.

"Gun-running has been very brisk lately. A caravan of rifles actually passed last month within sight of the old town of Jask, on its way to the Indian frontier."

Then he told me more about this trade: how the restless tribes on the north-west frontier of India will give almost any price for a military rifle; that they live by brigandage, looting peaceful villages on the British side of the frontier, or, when not so employed, fighting among themselves. They cannot get rifles from India except by creeping up to a British picket—natives or white men—shooting or stabbing, and stealing rifles in that way; so the Arabs ship them across the Gulf, and take them up on camels through the Baluchistan deserts. So many rifles are now captured by our cruisers, gunboats, and steam-launches that the demand is always greater than the supply; and as, directly they have been run safely into Baluchistan, rifles which originally cost three pounds are worth thirty to thirty-five each, the temptation to deal in arms is enormous.

"But who sells the Arabs these rifles?" I asked. The business was quite a mystery to me.

The political agent shrugged his shoulders.

"You'd better not ask. We both of us have to obey orders, and neither of us had better ask questions. Get away as soon as you like. The Intrepid is coming from Aden in a week's time, and will meet you off the coast, but I want you there as soon as possible."

"I'll go back at once," I said eagerly.

He nodded approvingly, and took me to wish the ladies good-bye.

"Do be careful," his wife said earnestly. "It was terrible about poor Mr. Collingwood and his gunner; everyone was so upset."

"I nearly waved to you when you passed the Bunder Abbas this morning," I told Miss Borsen, "but was afraid you'd think me forward—think me like that fussy major."

She laughed merrily.

"You were quite right. You never wished me good-bye when you left the steamer, so I should not have waved back."

The political agent accompanied me part of the way.

"That looks as if you expected to be attacked," I remarked, pointing to the earthworks, breastworks, and lines of wire entanglement.

"That's all over for the present. Some wandering brigand tribe did make it unpleasant for us once, but that's ancient history now. Good-bye! Look! my wife and Miss Borsen are waving good-bye."

I waved my helmet, and strode down the path feeling quite a hero, my head full of my new job.

As my boat ran alongside the Bunder Abbas Mr. Scarlett, with a grim smile, received me, whilst Moore (the petty officer), looking as sulky as a bear, "piped" me over the side, and the crew, lascars as well, stood to attention.

"I've had a few words with 'em. Told 'em the Bunder Abbas wasn't a Plymouth ash-boat but a man-of-war, and they'd behave as such," Mr. Scarlett chuckled.

"We have to get up steam and start hunting dhows as soon as ever we can," I burst out enthusiastically, telling him what were my orders.

I expected him to be as pleased as I was; but his face fell and he would not look me in the eyes. I did not understand him yet—not in the least. However, there were many difficulties in the way of sailing immediately—chiefly due to the shortage of fresh water for the tanks and boilers. Moore did not know where to get any on shore. He said sullenly that it wasn't any use trying during the hot hours of the day, that everyone on shore slept then, and that the crew, too, generally slept. "It was a-working in the 'eat of the day what killed Mr. Collingwood, 'im what died of sunstroke," he muttered, reminding me of the latter's fate for about the tenth time since coming on board.

I told him to "Get out of it and go to Jericho!"

Fortunately there was a splendid fellow on board, Webster, the corporal of marines, who knew how to get water on shore. He, the Persian interpreter (a stolid, aristocratic individual in spotless white clothes and a black fez), and myself went ashore in the dinghy and made ourselves extremely unpopular, disturbing an Arab contractor and waking half the village (if you could call it a village). But we got our water alongside in a couple of hours and on board half an hour later. Oh, my head was hot! On shore the sun seemed to strike right through my helmet, glaring at me from the dusty, sandy ground and hitting me from every white mud wall. I had never been so hot in my life.

At last everything was ready. We hove up our rusty cable and slipped out through the cluster of dhows anchored near us. The sun was low, and as I set my course from a tall signal-mast at one corner of the telegraph buildings, the white walls were tinged a rosy red. At the foot of the flagstaff I thought I saw the figures of two women. Risking another snub from the little lady with the yellow hair and grey eyes, I waved my helmet. Sure enough, two white handkerchiefs fluttered for a moment. I smiled, pleased that she had forgiven me.

Then the sun sank in a glory of red gold, and off we steamed, whilst I smoked my pipe and watched the lonely telegraph buildings and the sand-hills behind them gradually sink below the horizon.

I was so happy that I would not have changed places with all the kings of England from William I—1066—that I could remember.

For the first few hours, as we jogged along, a half-moon gave plenty of light; but it set by midnight, and the night was dark, with hardly a breath of wind.

Several times dhows glided by noiselessly and mysteriously, with a phosphorescent glow along their water-lines, and each time one passed I felt as excited as a child. I was much too excited to sleep; kept Mr. Scarlett's watch, and gradually edged to the eastward so as to be about halfway between those two creeks, and five miles or so off the land, at sunrise.

That first sunrise—the flood of marvellously changing shades of delicate colours, spreading upwards from behind the Persian mountains—was magical. Even though my thoughts were full of other things, I almost held my breath as I watched it. Away inshore, to the south-east, was the little headland of Kuh-i-Mubarak, with a peculiar-shaped rock (marked on the chart) on its top; and to the north-east was Sheikh Hill and the cliffs which the political agent had sketched for me. Between them the shore and the low sand-hills were, as yet, invisible, and not a sail was in sight.

"Well, here we are, Mr. Scarlett," I said with satisfaction, as he came to relieve me after a sound night's sleep. "We're just where I wanted to be. We'll go and have a look at that creek leading to Bungi."

In half an hour we had shoved the Bunder Abbas within a few hundred yards of the foot of Sheikh Hill, with its old dilapidated fort perched on top, and some white-robed figures squatting on the rocks outside it. I went right in, almost under the high cliffs on the opposite side of the little bay, until the mouth of the creek came in view, with a number of native boats drawn up on the sand, and, far inland, the tops of a few palm trees.

Mr. Scarlett, looking nervous and anxious, spotted a dirty-looking chap looking down at us from the tops of those cliffs. "He has a rifle," I said, handing him my glasses, and had hardly spoken before a spurt of water jumped up under our bows with a "flop", and a bullet, smacking against the anchor, squealed past us. I saw Mr. Scarlett's face turn grey, and his hand shook as he hurriedly gave back the glasses.

"He's an Afghan," he said; "an Arab would not fire without some excuse. We'd better get out of it, sir."

The man had flung himself down among the rocks at the top of those cliffs, almost over our heads. We could not have hit him with rifle, Maxim, or six-pounder; so, as I had seen all that was to be seen, I turned the Bunder Abbas round and went to sea again. The Afghan, or whoever he was, fired once or twice after us, but he was a wretchedly bad shot.

"Queer beggars, them Afghans," Mr. Scarlett said, recovering his equanimity when we were out of rifle range. "It don't matter where they are, but they'll take a pot-shot at a white man, even if they know they'll be scuppered the very next moment. You may bet your life, sir, that as there are some of them hanging round here, here they mean to land them rifles."

There was not a breath of wind to be felt, and no dhow could possibly run in for the next few hours, so I sauntered down to look at the creek near Kuh-i-Mubarak, eleven miles to the south. Here the water was very deep right up to the shore, and in the creek. I steamed up it for a mile and a half, winding between bare sand-hills, which concealed any view behind them, until it widened suddenly into a great basin or "khor" that shoaled rapidly.

"There won't be any water for us," Mr. Scarlett said, fidgeting.

Bother the water! I wanted to see all I could, so pushed on. I had not seen a single living thing or sign of habitation, so crept along, sounding as I went, until the sand-hills opened out and showed a wide plain dotted with palm trees, a few huts close to the water, and many boats drawn up in front of them.

"Look!" I shouted. "Look! Look at all those things under the trees—camels, as sure as ninepence!" Through my telescope I could see fifty or sixty yellowish-brown things kneeling, like lumps of mud, under the shade of those palms, moving their long necks, and some human beings were walking about among them. At any rate I had seen one lot of camels. I was quite satisfied, backed the Bunder Abbas out until there was room to turn her round, and put to sea.

All the rest of that day, the next night, and for three more days and nights we patrolled up and down from one creek to another, and not a sign of dhow did we see.

Those days were busy enough. Mr. Scarlett and I between us had "shaken up" the crew with a vengeance. Moore wished he'd never been born. I had the whole crew "fallen in" and said a few words to them, letting them know that I was going to stand no nonsense, and that until the Bunder Abbas was clean above and below, inside and out, bright work polished and paintwork clean, nobody would have any afternoon sleep whatever.

The trouble of it all was that there were so few of them that either they were on watch or standing off.

The whole crew consisted of only ten white men, besides myself and the gunner: Moore, the petty officer; Dobson, a quiet, determined-looking leading seaman; four able seamen—Andrews, Jackson, Wiggins, and Griffiths; a signalman named Hartley—the laziest man on board; and three marines—Webster, the corporal, and Jones and Gamble, privates. Picked men they were, I knew, though they had been allowed to get "out of hand". Webster, the corporal, was, as far as I could judge, the best man among them. He did the duties of ship's corporal, steward, sick-berth steward, and writer—and did them well too.

In addition to these there was Jaffa, the Persian interpreter, silent and dignified, always spotlessly clean—a good-looking fellow if he had not had a cataract in one eye. Jaffa was far and away ahead of all the other natives. He gave you the impression that he was the descendant of Persian emperors, brooding over the deserted grandeur and humbled state of his country at the present time. In fact, I treated him with the greatest respect from the very first day.

There were three lascar drivers and nine lascar firemen to look after the boilers and engine, their own lascar "bundari" or cook, another cook of some unknown nationality, and his boy, to cook for the rest of the crew. These two were the most depressed, dirty-looking objects I had ever seen. One or the other, generally both, could be seen at any hour of the day—or night, I believe—crouched on the deck, outside the little galley, swishing a dirty cloth round the middle of a saucepan or dish, gazing dejectedly across the sea, and looking as if they longed to jump into it and finish all their worries. Last but one was a snuff-coloured Goanese carpenter; and, last of all, Sinamuran, our Tamil boy from Trincomalee, who "did" for Mr. Scarlett and myself, and soon began to look quite respectable. We never had to call "Percy" a second time, day or night, before he had glided, silent as a ghost, to our elbows, looking with solemn black eyes to see what was wanted.

This was the strangely-assorted crew collected in the little Bunder Abbas—thirty in all, and speaking half a dozen languages. The white crew lived aft and the coloured men for'ard.

The bluejackets' uniform consisted of white, mushroom-shaped helmets or topees, white-coloured singlets, and duck "shorts". At night they wore their ordinary ship's caps, flannel jumpers, and duck trousers. I don't believe there was a yard of blue serge in the launch; so the "bluejackets" were not anything like the bluejackets one sees in England. The armament of the Bunder Abbas consisted of that six-pounder in the bows, the two Maxims in the stern, ten rifles and sword-bayonets, ten cutlasses, and twelve revolvers. We had plenty of ammunition. So now, perhaps, it is possible for anyone to picture us as we patrolled slowly up and down that coast, keeping well away from shore in the sweltering daytime and creeping closer during the comparatively cool nights.

For four days and nights there was scarcely a puff of wind to ruffle the surface of the sea—certainly not enough to move a dhow; so we saw nothing. But on the evening of that fourth day a fair breeze sprang up, only to die down again before midnight. Just before daybreak Mr. Scarlett woke me. As I jumped to my feet he pointed seawards, and there, sure enough, even in the indistinct light, was a dhow, about four miles off, crawling inshore with a fitful breeze behind her.

"That's no proper trader," Mr. Scarlett whispered hoarsely, his voice shaking a little. "Look what a wretched thing she is! The Arabs never run arms in a new or big dhow: the risk of capture is too great. See that signal?"

I looked ashore to where he was pointing. We were abreast Sheikh Hill, and on it we could see a red light being moved about.

"It's a warning signal," Mr. Scarlett said, "and she hasn't seen it yet."

"Off we go!" I chuckled, my heart thumping with excitement. "Get the guns cleared away."

"Aye, aye, sir," Mr. Scarlett answered bravely, but his voice trembled and his face turned that muddy colour again. He would not catch my eye, and went down on deck. I bit my lip with vexation. If I could not depend upon him at a pinch, what was I to do?

Percy brought me a cup of coffee, smiling, and looking at the dhow. I drank it at a gulp. Extraordinarily thirsty I was, and the air had a peculiar "dry feeling".

Griffiths happened to be at the wheel. I nodded, and he turned the launch towards the dhow, whilst I called down the voice-pipe to the engine-room and ordered more steam.