GUNBOAT AND GUN-RUNNER (continued 4)

We had to take the risk that perhaps after all the Intrepids had not landed, and that directly we opened fire the whole force of Arabs would turn back and overwhelm us.

I told Jaffa and Griffiths that we must open fire. Griffiths nodded. "Just as you like sir; I'm ready."

Webster must be told, and Jaffa was the man to tell him, because, if he was seen, his clothes at a distance might be mistaken for those of an Arab.

I told him to make his way to the top of the ridge, find out what was happening down in the valley, how far away the horses were, and how many men had been left with them. Then he had to work his way along beneath the sky-line to Webster, and tell him to separate his men, station them on the top of the ridge so that they could not be seen, but, if possible, be able to fire down both ways, and, when I opened fire, to do so himself at every armed Arab in sight.

Jaffa understood, took my field-glasses, and wriggled away up to the ridge, whilst Griffiths and I listened to the noise of grating stones. Then there was silence and what seemed a very long period of waiting whilst we anxiously watched that rear-guard descending. If we did not open fire soon it would be too late.

At last I could stand the strain no longer. Jaffa must have had time to reach Webster, although we had not seen him crawling over the ridge.

Already the leading men of the rear-guard were indistinct in the gloom of the lower zigzags.

"We must chance it," I whispered to Griffiths. "You scramble up till you get a comfortable place where you can see both ways. I'll go halfway towards the gap. When I open fire you commence; aim awfully carefully. Now go!"

We both rose stiffly to our hands and knees, dodged round the rocks, and separated. Some cartridges fell out of my bandolier. I stopped to pick them up: one cartridge might make all the difference. I crawled to the top of the ridge.

I gave one hurried look into the valley, but not a sign of horses or Arabs could I see. I threw myself down and crawled to the edge of a rock from where I could point my rifle into the darkening "coffee-cup". As I did so I saw Webster and his two marines leave their shelter and clamber up the crest on their side of the gap.

There was no time to wait; the excitement was too great to think what would be the result of this new move, too great to realize anything. Not twenty armed Arabs were in sight down in that vast hollow beneath us, little, dirty, whitish, moving figures threading their way past the motionless camels.

I took a very careful aim at the nearest and fired.

CHAPTER X

The Fight in the "Coffee-cup"

As I fired so did Griffiths; our two rifles went off almost together. We fired again. Three shots also came from Webster's side of the gap.

The effect was immediate.

Those camel-drivers who were abandoning their camels and creeping up to what they thought was safety, stopped; those still squatting among the camels scrambled to their feet; the little string of moving figures, the last of the rear-guard (it was at them we had fired) turned, looked up, and tried to find cover. Unfortunately for them there was no cover where they were, and they showed up against the rocks sufficiently well to make fair targets. We kept on firing at them, firing almost vertically downwards, and presently saw one stumble and fall off the path among the boulders strewn at the bottom. The rest managed to crawl safely down the last "leg" of that zigzag and scattered among those same boulders, hiding one by one.

I had no fear that they would "spot" us yet, because the Lee Metfords made scarcely a streak of smoke. For the same reason they would not be able to know how few we were.

Jaffa, having given my message to Webster, returned and crawled to my side, and told me the comforting news that he had seen the horses, quite two miles away down the valley, with very few men left to guard them.

As I peered below I could see the camel-drivers seeking cover all along the line, squeezing themselves behind rocks or underneath the motionless camels themselves. We made many of them hurry still more by firing at them, until in less than a minute after we had opened fire there was absolutely nothing to be seen on the wall of precipitous rocks except the zigzag line of camels—some standing, others kneeling, some facing upwards, others downwards.

Jaffa cried for me to look.

At the bottom, hastening back round that projecting corner of rock which hid the outlet from the "coffee-cup", many little moving dots appeared. I seized the glasses, and believed I could see the green turban of the sheikh. Dropping them I called to Griffiths to fire, and emptied my magazine into the middle of the group.

It was grand, it was just what I had wanted. The more men we forced to come back within sight the fewer would remain to defend the ravine out of sight, where we could not get at them.

Now if only the Intrepids would hurry up!

I pricked up my ears. One solitary report of a rifle came up from below, dull and muffled. More followed rapidly, and I fully expected to hear bullets coming our way, thinking that the sheikh's party had commenced firing in our direction. However, none came, nor could I see any spurts of flame from among those boulders, although it was so gloomy there that I certainly should have seen them had those fellows been firing at us. The only explanation could be that the firing was outside the ravine, and must be at the Intrepid's people—or perhaps from them. My ears tingled as I tried to decide which.

The volume of fire increased so rapidly that soon I could not distinguish individual shots; there was one continuous grumbling rumble, and suddenly whatever doubt I had was swept away, for I heard the tut-tut-tut-tut of a Maxim—faint but unmistakable.

That settled the question. Griffiths shouted: "They've come, sir; that's their Maxim," and a moment later, to make still more certain, a sudden flash of flame burst out among those boulders at the bottom of the "coffee-cup" and the noise of a bursting shell came bellowing up to us.

I found myself waving my arms and cheering; the others were doing the same. Some vultures which had remained indifferent to the noise of rifle firing flapped heavily up from below. The camel-leaders were peeping down to see what was happening; the camels themselves showed no signs of alarm.

Several more shells bursting there in quick succession so filled the hollow beneath us with smoke that we could see nothing until, very leisurely, the white cloud began drifting upwards, clinging to projecting rocks in little eddies, just like the morning mist in some deep valley before the sun has quite driven it away. Eventually we could actually smell that powder smoke as it escaped over the "rim" of the "coffee-cup", and it was the most beautiful scent we could wish for.

Good little nine-pounder! I'd often seen it on the Intrepid's poop.

The noise of the firing continued without cessation, rising and falling in fierceness, and although we could still hear shells bursting we could not see them. Probably those first few had been fired before the Intrepids knew where the Arabs lay concealed.

Occasionally a different sound came up to us—the puff of a bursting shrapnel—and as I pictured the little balls flinging themselves down among the rocks, and finding out the defending Arabs, I wondered how long they would stand such a trial.

The worst of it was that we could take no part.

Those Arabs who had come back with their sheikh—and the rear-guard, too—had probably wormed their way out of the hollow and were taking part in the defence. There was no one for us to fire at. A few of the camel-leaders were in view, though, as they were unarmed, we did not waste ammunition on them.

All five of us had ceased fire and were listening to the noise of fighting. We tried to distinguish some difference between the Arab firing and the shots from our own people, but that screen of rocks seemed to muffle them and make this impossible. We could not even tell whether the rattle of the Maxim was getting nearer to us; nor could we distinguish the firing of the nine-pounder at all.

Whether hours seemed minutes or minutes hours I could not tell. All I did know was that we were not helping, and that it might be impossible for the Intrepid's people to dislodge the Arabs. What could we do to compel some of them to come back? I racked my brains but could think of nothing.

Then Jaffa suggested shooting the camels. "You shoot camels—they fall down—break rifles—Bedouin lose camels and rifles as well—must come back to save them!"

I did not know; but we might try, however cruel and inhuman it was.

I sent him across to tell Webster to single out the nearest standing camel and fire at it until it fell. I called to Griffiths to fire at the second standing camel, and chose the third myself. It was that magnificently-caparisoned one belonging to the sheikh, standing perhaps four hundred feet below me, entirely unconcerned, and unmistakable in its gorgeous crimson cloth.

I fired very carefully at him. At my second shot he swung his head round as if a fly had bitten him; at my third he lurched forward, fell over the edge, and plunged down. Almost immediately one of those smaller animals toppled over, and both, crashing across zigzag after zigzag, swept more camels in front of them. The bottom was so filled with powder smoke that we could scarcely follow the confused mass of bodies as they hurtled downwards.

The utmost terror broke out among the unarmed Arabs. We could see them leaving their camels and taking shelter under any projecting rock they could reach. I fired at another wretched brute, standing with his bundle of rifles so closely pressed against the side of the precipice that I knew that the path must be very narrow there. Immediately below him, on the next zigzag, was a confused group of animals clustered on a broader path.

At my second shot he staggered, fell right among them, swept three or four off their feet, and another avalanche swept down.

I felt almost sick at what I had done and stopped firing to see what would happen. The others ceased firing too.

Jaffa came back and lay down near me. His one eye was better than my two, so I gave him the glasses.

Then—all at once—bullets came whizzing our way, striking rocks below, above, at each side of us, and screaming away out of the "coffee-cup". The noise of this rifle fire was very different—each shot was a roar, magnified a hundred times, and multiplied a hundred times as it re-echoed from the walls of the chasm.

Thank goodness! At last we had compelled the sheikh to weaken his defence by trying to save his caravan from destruction.

Griffiths and I began firing at more camels; Webster and his men followed suit; more went hurtling down.

We had to do this, however cruel and beastly it was. Unless we kept those fellows away from the mouth of the ravine, the Intrepids might never force their way in.

I could now see the flashes of many rifles—it was a beautiful sight.

Jaffa, excited for the first time, told me that twenty or thirty armed Arabs were climbing up the zigzag. I wished that fifty or a hundred were coming—the more the better. They could not possibly see to aim at us, nor could they know how few we were, and as they emerged from the gloom we could pick them off like starlings on a fence.

Several more camels were hit and fell. Absolute panic had broken out among the unarmed men; many of those on the upper zigzags began creeping and crawling downwards, and I knew that when they met the Arabs coming up to attack us, the confusion on that awful path, and in that awful obscurity below, would be appalling.

After this events began to follow each other very rapidly.

The number of bullets whizzing round us was great, and proved that very many men must have been withdrawn already, back into the hollow; I felt certain that the noise of the Maxim gun seemed louder. If this meant anything it meant that the Arabs were gradually being forced back and that the line of bluejackets was advancing.

Very shortly afterwards the character of the noise of rifle firing altered entirely. There was very little of that muffled rumbling which we had heard before; the noise was sharper and very much louder, and amongst it, quite distinct, I could hear the most distant sound of our own rifles, much like tin tacks being driven into wood with single blows of a big hammer. The bottom of the ravine, too, was lighted up with hundreds and hundreds of rifle flashes, and shells began bursting there again. This made it certain that the Arabs had actually fallen back into the bottom of the "coffee-cup", and I knew that they must be so bunched up together that the shrapnel bullets would soon compel them to scatter up the lower legs of that zigzag. Once there it would be difficult to reach them, but I did not bother about that. They would have to come up and attack us if they wanted to save a single camel.

Jaffa quietly told me that they were already beginning to do this, and then, almost before he had spoken, I heard the faint sound of cheering, and knew that the Intrepids were rushing the mouth of the ravine.

Oh, what a grand, comforting sound that was!

The nine-pounder had stopped firing; so had the Maxim. Probably the guns' crews could not keep pace with the last rush of our fellows, or could not fire without hitting them.

Then I saw spurts of rifle flame spitting out into the gorge, in the very opposite direction from which they had been spluttering before, and knew that they came from our own people.

It was grand! It meant absolute victory and the capture of the entire caravan. I turned and grinned at Jaffa and Griffiths.

"Bedouin come up very fast—plenty come," Jaffa said.

"Well, let them come; so much the better," I thought; but then it struck me that in my excitement I had not noticed how rapidly the sun was setting. The shadow of the ridge above us had long since swallowed up the whole of the opposite face of the walls of the "coffee-cup". What with the powder smoke and the shadow I could not see farther down than about the third zigzag. In the morning it had taken us a full hour to scale the path when it was clear; now these people had to do the same thing when it was blocked with camels. They could not possibly do this in less than two hours, and by then I knew that the sun would have set and that it would be completely dark before one of them could put foot in the gap.

This difficulty now faced us, and I had not foreseen it.

If those Arabs intended to abandon their camels, scale the path, and endeavour to escape back to their horses in the valley, what should we do, or, rather, what would become of us?

So long as they only thought of escape, all would be well. They were probably well beaten now, but directly it became impossible for our people to keep them "on the move" with rifle fire—owing to the lack of light to aim at them—they would begin to recover from their panic. Once they came up to where we were we dare not fire on them, because the flashes of our rifles would have told them immediately that there were only five of us.

If we did not fire they would imagine that we had evacuated the ridge, and the obvious thing for them to do was to occupy it themselves, and wait until morning. If they did that, I realized very well that we could not escape, and, more important still, I knew that it would be impossible for Commander Duckworth to remove a single camel from the path under the fire of their rifles, and that all the nine-pounders and Maxims in the Navy could not dislodge them.

Already rifle fire was dying down at the bottom. It was too dark to aim there, and it would soon be too dark for us to aim either. No bullets had come our way for some time, so I had not them to disturb me as I tried to think what to do.

At first I thought that we all should gather in the gap itself and defend ourselves there, but I gave up that idea because I felt sure they would scale the ridge above it on either side, shoot down, and make an end of us pretty soon.

I did not know what to do.

All I could see now, except for the very occasional flash of a rifle, was a frightened group of camel-drivers huddled together on the third zigzag, apparently waiting for the armed men to join them before they plucked up sufficient courage to start the ascent. It was too dark farther down to see a single camel.

Then Jaffa turned to me and said simply: "I go down path—speak to camel men—tell them you no want kill Bedouin—Bedouin throw rifle away—you won't shoot—if they no throw rifle away you kill them all."

My aunt! What a chap! What a scheme! If it would only work, and if only the camel men could get the Arabs to listen!

"I tell them you have a hundred men on top—they no know—very frightened—very much frightened."

"But they might kill you," I said.

He shook his head, and drew his beloved Mauser pistol. "I go and speak to them."

"All right! Good for you! Go along!"

He did not stand up and scramble down to the path; he wriggled himself below the farther side of the crest, and presently appeared through the gap, walking coolly along the path, his white suit making him very conspicuous.

I crawled over the crest myself, and made my way to the gap. So did Griffiths.

We saw Jaffa holding up his hands to show that he came in peace, and heard him calling loudly. Then some heads appeared much nearer than I imagined any Arabs to have reached, and gazed at him. He stopped and harangued them, pointing along the crest where we had been lying, sweeping his hands from side to side as if there was a bluejacket behind each rock.

The Arabs were answering him, and he was arguing with them like a father. Then, as the last rays of the sun streamed through the gap, he came sauntering back to us. Webster and his marines had joined me. "They believe me," Jaffa said. "All very frightened—will tell Bedouin—Bedouin throw away rifles."

"You are a splendid chap!" was all I could say.

I told Webster what Jaffa proposed to do, and at his suggestion we all began to show ourselves at different points along the crest—one here, two there, all of us at another place—dodging backwards and forwards, dividing into parties, and going to opposite sides of the gap. I felt as though we were a lot of "supers" in a pantomime, trying to "make believe" that we were an army.

Breathless, we all collected again at the gap.

It was not quite dark yet—not behind us—where the twilight lingered a little, and we could see perhaps fifty yards along the path into the "coffee-cup".

Presently Webster proposed that he and I should take station at either side of the mouth of the gap, and that the two marines should do the same at the other end of it. He suggested this because if we all stayed where we were there would be no room for the Arabs to pass. Griffiths I sent up to the ridge above it, with orders to fire only when told to do so. He did not like leaving us, because it was so dark. In fact we could hardly see each other, and, looking down into the hollow, the darkness seemed like black velvet.

Up from that blackness came sounds of men calling to each other; once or twice there were yells of pain or fright, and we strained our ears to hear whether anyone had fallen down. The noises were still far below, but gradually approaching.

We waited, and, with nothing else to do, began to grow fearfully nervous. When one is frightened one gives an enemy credit for all the virtues and valour and skill imaginable, and thinks that he must be cool and collected. At that time I could not conceive how we could escape being killed, and was only certain of one thing—that I'd account for as many Arabs as possible before that happened.

I wondered what our fellows were doing at the bottom, and whether old Popple Opstein was there. I knew that they dared not attempt to climb the path at night.

Jaffa began to coach us as to what we should say when the Arabs came. He made us repeat after him: "Khalli bunduk 'ak", meaning "Throw down your rifle"; "Ist agel", meaning "Hurry up"; and "Ma kattle kum", meaning "Won't shoot you".

We repeated these after him till we knew them. Shall I ever forget them!

Then he said it was time for him to go, and asked me for a box of matches. Luckily I had one—nearly full it was. Why he wanted matches I did not know.

We heard the stones rattling under his feet as he slipped away down the path.

"Can you see me?" he called out.

I shouted back: "Yes."

He went farther down the path, asking at every two or three paces whether we could see him. When our eyes had become accustomed to following his white clothes we could distinguish them at quite a distance.

At last he had gone too far.

"We can't see you!" I called.

He retraced his footsteps until he was again visible. Then he seemed to rise in the air.

"I stand on rock by side of path!" he shouted; "path is under my feet—to my right—very narrow—Bedouin must pass one by one—I speak to them—make them throw away rifles—if no give up rifle I strike match—you see match—fire below match—kill Bedouin."

"Come back!" I yelled. "It's too dangerous!"

"No! I stay!" and nothing would induce him to give up his plucky scheme.

Plucky! Why, it was the bravest job any man could have taken on himself.

Quite close beneath us men began shouting. I hoped these were the camel men warning the armed Arabs to throw away their rifles if they wanted to save their lives. I knew that in a few minutes the first of them would reach Jaffa, and that then the crisis would come. Webster was fidgeting with the bolt of his breech-block and breathing hard.

Already Jaffa was beginning to call out: "Khalli bunduk 'ak! Khalli bunduk 'ak! Ma kattle kum! Ist agel! ist agel!"

Our nerves were very much on edge.

Then footsteps began to approach, softly, cautiously. Jaffa altered his tone of voice. One could almost imagine that he was imploring someone, for his own safety, to throw away his rifle, just as a father might have done. We heard the noise of a rifle falling on to the rocks, then another and another, and, before Webster and I realized it, dim, cloaked figures came up to the gap and stopped there, as if frightened and uncertain what to do.

My heart was in my mouth then, and I said as firmly as I could: "Ma kattle kum! Ist agel!" Webster chipping in with a quaver in his voice, and the two marines and Griffiths bellowing these words behind and above us.

For a moment the Arabs still hesitated, but then they commenced to pass through the gap between Webster and myself.

One, two, half a dozen, a dozen panting figures glided through, and more came—twenty or thirty more—and all the time Jaffa's voice sounded—as calmly as if he were aboard the "B.A."—"Khalli bunduk 'ak! khalli bunduk 'ak! Ma kattle kum! ma kattle kum!"

Then I heard Griffiths moving among the rocks overhead, probably shifting himself into a more comfortable position, and the fool must have had his finger on his trigger, because his rifle went off, right in our faces, almost blinding us.

Of course the approaching Arabs thought that we were firing at those who had passed through the gap, and believed that they were going to be murdered.

I cursed Griffiths, and shouted: "Ma kattle kum! ma kattle kum!"

Jaffa yelled to us not to shoot—but no more Arabs came.

Out of the darkness Jaffa's voice sounded, higher pitched now: "Khalli bunduk 'ak," and voices at his feet answered him, angry voices, despairing voices; a crowd of Arabs seemed to be collecting all along the path, and people were calling up from below. I realized that they were refusing to part with their rifles, preferring to have a chance for their lives, or to die, if they had to, with them in their hands.

We were all shouting: "Ma kattle kum! Ist agel!" The two marines, knowing that something was wrong, ran to us.

"Stand by to fire! Be very careful; fire below, and to right of the match, if Jaffa strikes one."

There was a very ominous murmur now. Jaffa was haranguing, expostulating; then he stopped.

"Stand by!" I shouted, bringing my rifle to my shoulder.

A tiny light showed. Jaffa had struck a match.

"Fire!" I yelled, and our four rifles went off together.

We heard groans, a yell of pain, and a body falling. Some of our bullets had gone home.

Jaffa's pistol flashed once; we fired again; it flashed a second time, and then, with a glare and a startling roar, a shell burst not fifty yards below us, and for a second or two lighted up the whole scene—Jaffa on the rock, and those Arabs, a whole line of them, surging up to him. Wild screams came up from a lower path, and told us that men there had been wounded; and Jaffa began in his old voice of calm assurance, "Ma kattle kum! Khalli bunduk 'ak"—he never once stopped talking.

"No shoot," he called to us; "they throw away rifles—they come:" and with the most intense relief from the strain of those few awful seconds I heard the welcome clatter of rifles on the rocks, and that weird procession began again to pass between us.

In their hurry to escape this new terror of the bursting shells the Arabs actually swept the two marines back to the farther end of the gap.

Another shell burst, some way from us, but near enough for all to hear the fragments smashing against the rocks, and enough to break the nerves of any who had already suffered as those poor wretches had done.

I realized now that they were absolutely panic-stricken; they were throwing away their rifles long before they reached Jaffa. They came in one continuous line through the gap, struggling with each other to escape those shells, and to escape from that awful inferno below them.

They were mere terror-stricken fugitives, with no more fight left in them, and Webster and I had to step aside, out of the mouth of the gap, to prevent them carrying us along with them in their flight. We were shouting: "Ist agel! Ma kattle kum!" more to let them know the way to the gap than anything else, for the glare of those shells (which burst dangerously close to us every four or five minutes) blinded everyone, and they could not see the way. In fact, we four standing there, and Jaffa on his rock, were now doing nothing more dangerous than a policeman does in calling out to a crowd to pass along. The marines at the farther end of the gap had forgotten their Arabic words, and forgotten their fright—if they had been frightened—and were shouting: "'Urry up there! keep a-moving! 'Ere, you won't get no front seat if you don't 'urry. Pass along, please! First turn to the right takes you to the 'orses. 'Urry up! 'urry up! The show's about to begin."

Griffiths, on the rocks above, had altered "Ma kattle kum," into "Call the cattle home," and was droning this out under the impression that he was talking the proper "lingo".

As one shell burst I had seen a group of men on one of the paths apparently bearing a comrade. In time they came up to Jaffa, and I heard the sound of voices entreating something. Jaffa called to me that it was the sheikh's son, badly wounded and asking for water.

With shuffling footsteps they bore him up to the gap, and laid him on a rock.

I could well imagine the awful experience he must have had whilst being carried up there amongst his terrified followers, and the tremendous pluck of those who had stuck to him.

They now began crying "Pani! ma!" and Jaffa called out that the sheikh's son wanted water. He, poor chap, did not deign to ask; but for a half-suppressed groan, when they laid him on the rocks, he was absolutely silent.

We had no water (our water-bottles had been emptied long ago), but I remembered that brass cooking bowl in which the rear-guard had started to cook coffee.

It had been placed between some rocks, so had not been upset, and I groped round and found it. There was still some liquid "of sorts" in it. I gave the bowl to the men, and they scooped up a little fluid with their hands and poured it into his mouth. They finished the remainder themselves. Then they picked him up and bore him through the gap as he muttered something, apparently to me—though whether a blessing or a curse I did not know.

The two marines hurried them on with cruel jests, and, before they had passed through, the blaze of another shell lighted up the mournful little band and the red-stained beard of the sheikh. I looked for the green turban, but that was gone.

During the next few minutes perhaps twenty limping, hard-breathing men passed us. After that, though we waited and watched the zigzag path whenever a shell burst, not a single man could be seen.

It was time to stop those shells. They were meant well, but they had done their work and had scared the Arabs; now we should be very relieved if no more came, because many were unpleasantly close.

I ordered the two marines, Webster and Griffiths, to fire three volleys into the air, giving them the word of command, and firing myself. Whether the Intrepids saw these volleys or not, or whether they understood that we were "all correct" or not, I did not know, but they ceased firing.

Then, at last, we knew that we had won, that the morning would show us our prize—the caravan of living camels strung along the zigzag path and the dead ones below. But we were too worn out with the strain of that day's work, and that last hour or more in the gap, to feel any exultation. All we wanted to do was to lie down and sleep, and all we wanted to see was the rising of the blessed sun. We had cursed it a good many times during the last three months; now, how we did long to see it again!

Jaffa came back to us, and we made much of him, praised him, and told him that it was he who had saved us and captured the caravan, that all the credit was due to him.

He simply lay down and slept. Praise from us seemed to mean nothing to him. I let every one of them sleep. I only had to say the word, and they simply subsided where they stood, and straightway fell asleep.

Backwards and forwards by myself I paced from one end to the other of that gap, my rifle in my hand, looking down into the black obscurity as I came to the opening on each side.

Away down in the valley which had swallowed up those panic-stricken Arabs I sometimes heard voices, gradually growing fainter and fainter in the distance. Below, in the "coffee-cup", occasionally weird noises came up, perhaps from those poor wretched camels still huddled on that awful path, with their unwieldy burden of rifles flattened against the rocks. Once or twice a momentary twinkle of light flickered far below; probably the bluejackets were striking matches to light their pipes. It was a comfort to think that someone down there still kept watch.

Presently a land-breeze began gently sweeping through the gap, on its way to the sea; so warm and heavy was it that it made the desire to sleep an agony. How I could have remained awake without my pipe, I do not know; that, and perhaps my hunger, kept me going.

Hyenas, jackals, or wolves began howling in the valley; others, along the walls of the "coffee-cup", answered them. They must have scented blood, and appeared to be gathering all along the ridge, but did not venture down, staying there howling and whining in piercing cadences. I set their hateful music to a tune of "Keep awake! keep awake! one turn more! twelve paces! one turn more!"

There was no means of judging the time, but perhaps it was an hour after I had been left to myself when two wretched Arabs came stumbling up, or hopping up, dragging broken legs after them, and supporting each other. Poor, wretched, miserable creatures! the agony they must have suffered would have made me feel pity for them had not my brain been absolutely numbed with the craving for sleep, and unable to think of anything except the necessity for fighting it.

At last, when I thought that I must have done more than my share of "sentry-go", I simply collapsed on top of Webster. I remember him scrambling to his feet, but I am certain that I was sound asleep before I lay flat on the ground. It was no use being ashamed of myself; I was not. It was physically impossible for me to keep awake any longer, and, as it turned out, it was physically impossible for any of us to keep awake.

When I did awake it was broad daylight; the sun was just appearing over the opposite rim of the "coffee-cup", and dear old Popple Opstein was bending over me, shaking me. The gap was full of the Intrepid's bluejackets, and they were trying to shake life into the others. Jaffa was leaning against a rock.

"Water! water!" was the first thing I said, and Popple Opstein, with his face that strange violet colour, his eyes ablaze with excitement, gave me his water-bottle.

"We couldn't climb the path in the dark, Martin, old chap," he burst out. "We tried, but we couldn't do it. Two of our chaps fell over and broke legs or arms, so the commander brought us back.

"Thank goodness that he did call you back!" I said. "You would have all been killed. It's bad enough in daylight, with nothing blocking it."

"It took us three hours to get up," he said. "We counted more than a hundred camels on the path, and you knocked over any number. They are lying in heaps at the bottom!"

He gave me a ship's biscuit. Nothing I have ever tasted tasted so appetizing as that did, and he spared me another mouthful of water to wash the last crumbs down my throat.

Then I lighted a cigarette, and together we walked through the gap to see if there were any traces of the disarmed Arabs. The valley was empty and silent, shrouded in shadow. Not a single living thing could we see except a few vultures.

We walked back again and looked into the "coffee-cup". The zigzag path was now swarming with villagers and bluejackets trying to restore order among the camels. Close to the rock where Jaffa had stood, rifles lay scattered everywhere.

"We must have captured a couple of thousand rifles and thirty or forty thousand rounds of ammunition," my chum said exultingly. "It's the finest haul, they tell me, that's been made for years."

I don't mind saying that if he had told me that there was a steaming hot dish of bacon and eggs and a potful of coffee waiting for me round the corner I should have been much more excited—just at this time.

CHAPTER XI

The Cobra Bracelet Again

Take the whole world over, and you would not have found a more happy group than we made that morning, sitting in the gap, yarning whenever our jaws were not busy crunching the ship's biscuits the Intrepids had brought us; Webster, Griffiths, Jaffa, and the two marines surrounded by a crowd of bluejackets eager to learn every detail of the adventure, and the Baron and myself squatting on a rock, he beaming at me like an old mother hen who had just found her long-lost chick, and watching me munch his biscuit as if it was the most pleasant sight in the world.

"When darkness came on," he was saying, "We gave you up for 'finish'. We thought they'd rush you; we thought you'd have not the slightest chance of escape. You remember firing rifles—at the beginning—when it first got dark? We were waiting for them. We tried to help you with those shells of ours—it was the only thing we could do—but we made so certain that it was the beginning of the end for you that, when no more rifle flashes showed up, we thought you all were killed. We felt sick that we couldn't climb up and kill a few Arabs to revenge you, so we kept plugging away with the nine-pounder in sheer desperate anger. Man! we never guessed for a moment what was really happening. Look down there at that litter of rifles; the path and the rocks for a hundred yards are simply smothered with them. It's splendid! splendid, old chap!"

In his excitement my chum leant forward and gripped my shoulder till I winced.

"If you'd seen Jaffa standing there on his rock, and heard him calling out: 'Khalli bunduk 'ak. Ma kattle kum! Ist agel!' you'd have thought him splendid. He's the hero of the affair," I said, pointing to Jaffa, who was extricating himself from the crowd of his admirers and stalking solemnly away to perch himself on a rock, where no one could come and worry him with questions. "We shall never forget those words; we shouted them till we were hoarse. Didn't we, Webster?"

Webster smiled. "Pretty ticklish work—part of the time, sir!"

"Those shells of yours just did the trick," I went on, telling him how Griffiths's rifle going off accidentally had nearly brought about a catastrophe. "They were simply hideous in the darkness; the chasm looked a perfect hell, and the half-crazed wretches fled through the gap from them like a flock of sheep. How the dickens did you manage to train the gun and aim it? That's what beat me."

He explained that before it was too dark to see the gap from the bottom of the "coffee-cup" they had found a rock which gave, more or less, the proper elevation when the muzzle of the gun rested on it, and when the trail of the carriage was pushed up against another, the gun pointed somewhere in the right direction. After every shot they had had to drag it back, feel about for the rocks, and trust to luck. That was why the shells were so erratic and the firing so slow.

"We were very nearly as frightened of them as the Arabs were," I laughed, "and were mighty glad when you stopped your fireworks and bits of ironmongery flying round us."

Recollecting those volleys we had fired when all was over, I asked my chum whether they had seen them, and how they knew what we meant.

The Baron shook his head. "Too much smoke down there; we saw nothing. We only stopped firing for the simple reason that we'd fired every blessed shell we had. Why, my dear old chap, we thought you'd been 'deaders' long before. Even this morning we thought we should have to fight our way here; it was a kind of a forlorn hope; the commander didn't want me to come, and it was not until we were halfway up without being fired on that we had a glimmer of an idea that the Arabs had 'hoofed' it during the night. And you and your fellows were so fast asleep you never heard us cheering as we scrambled up the last fifty yards.

"When we saw you six huddled here we thought it was a burial party wanted—nothing else. Why, dear old ass, I was just turning you over to see where you'd been killed, when you began muttering some outlandish gibberish."

"Ma kattle kum!" I suggested, smiling.

"Something like that," he grinned. "Ugh! it was a bit of a shock," and his cheeks flushed that curious violet colour.

"What was a shock?" I asked. "Finding me alive?"

"No, you fool! Thinking we'd have to bury the lot of you, and not an inch of ground where we could stick a pickaxe, let alone a spade, for miles."

The Baron lifted his helmet and wiped his forehead.

The sight of his yellow hair reminded me of Miss Borsen, and I told him how I had managed to silence her tormenting little tongue. "Just picked her up like a feather, carried her twenty yards before she could say 'knife', and never a word more did she say. I thought I'd got the best of her for once, but she only thought me a horrid cad, and wouldn't even let me apologize, wouldn't even let me see her again. So she came off best after all."

"Women always do," the Baron grinned. "Irritating things, women."

We were both agreed on that point.

Then he told me his part of the yarn. It was just as I had thought. Some skunk of an Arab with a grievance had come along to Muscat and sneaked, given the whole show away, and the plan of taking all the rifles and ammunition still remaining at Jeb to Kalat al Abeid (the little village whose head-man had brought me up here to shoot leopards). That was why the Intrepid had hurried round. Even before Commander Duckworth had heard from Mr. Scarlett that I was up in the mountains he was preparing to land his men, and when he received my scribbled note it had been a case of hurrying ashore in double-quick time, to try to take possession of the mouth of the ravine leading to the "coffee-cup" before the Arabs reached it.

As you know, they did not, in spite of the villagers clapping on to the nine-pounder and Maxim and dragging them up those baking slopes. They had been met with a very fierce fire, and it was not till the resistance began to weaken (when many Arabs had been withdrawn to defend the camels from us) that the Intrepids could make any impression. But once an Arab leaves his first position for one farther in the rear, his chief anxiety is to keep his eye on a still safer place behind him; so, once they had begun to retire, the job was comparatively easy.

Before they gained the mouth of the ravine the Intrepids had lost two men killed and five wounded. My chum told me that Nicholson, the staff surgeon, did not expect one of those to pull through safely.

"It's jolly hard luck on them," the Baron said, his face falling.

We sat silent for some time, looking into the "coffee-cup" and watching the very tedious and dangerous work of getting the remaining camels safely down to the bottom.

Then a message was semaphored that the commander wanted to see me and my party; so I gathered them together and left the Baron and his men to keep watch at the gap in case the Arabs recovered from their fright and came back. There was precious little chance of this.

The zigzag path was the most extraordinary sight, littered with rifles, bandoliers, water-bags, turbans, and cloaks, showing how hurriedly the poor wretches had tried to escape. It was dangerous work there, and worse still when we reached the camels. Each poor brute thought we were bringing him food, and was furious when he saw we were not, swaying his neck and making an angry rumbling noise somewhere from halfway down his neck, scraping his bundle of rifles or ammunition-boxes against the rock. We had to squeeze past each one very carefully indeed, with an eye on his head and neck and a hand gripping at his bundle. Lower down we came to the villagers trying their best to shift the camels, make them get on their feet if they were kneeling, or turn them round if they were facing upwards. Poor devils, they were only fishermen, and were evidently making a poor job of this. Among them was my old friend the head-man, shouting orders by the dozen. He smiled affably, and gabbled a lot of weird words as I squeezed past him. Jaffa explained that he was comparing me "to the sun for strength and the jackal for cunning". I smiled back, and as Jaffa followed he commenced another long rigmarole, which I did not stay to listen to, but which Jaffa afterwards told me was to the effect that the Bedouin would be very angry, and would come back presently, when the Bunder Abbas and Intrepid had gone away, and kill them all.

That was the worst of it. I knew enough about the temper of those gun-running fellows—hadn't I seen what had happened at Bungi and Sudab?—and the Arabs are no whit less ferocious and revengeful than the Afghans. It seemed such hard luck to get those villagers to help us and then leave them to certain vengeance. These especial people were so simple, and had been so useful, that it would be a shame to leave them unprotected. But what could we do? Neither the Bunder Abbas nor the Intrepid could stay there for ever.

Lower down still, quite close to the bottom of the zigzag, I met the commander, very pleased with himself and with me too.

"You should get promotion out of this," he said, as I saluted; "it's the finest haul that's been made for years—three thousand rifles at least, and more ammunition than we've destroyed in the last twelve months."

He made me tell him the whole yarn over again, and then ordered me to take my men back to the Bunder Abbas. I did not want to go, but had to.

At the bottom of the "coffee-cup" I saw the mangled remains of many of the camels which had fallen down the precipice. Rifles from their burst bundles were scattered round them, and some of the Intrepids were still moving about among the boulders, searching for dead or wounded Arabs. Then at the very entrance to the gorge, round the corner where the Arabs had taken up their first position, I found Nicholson busy with the wounded, and showing some natives how to make litters.

The man who had been so desperately wounded was dead. "Nothing could have saved him," Nicholson told me, as though I might think he had not done enough for him. He brightened when he saw how little the scar on my forehead showed.

"A good bit of work—that," he said, quite pleased, and wanted me to take the other four wounded back to the village.

So off we started with them. Two could walk, and we took it in turns to carry the others, for the villagers were much too excited and impatient to realize the necessity for gentleness. They wanted to run along with them as if they had been sacks of potatoes.

Fifty or sixty of the camels were already slowly tramping down the rocky slope ahead of us, and when we reached the village we found them kneeling under the shade of some trees, looking quite contented—that is, if a camel can look contented. The youngsters who had brought them down, and all the women and children in the village, were gathered round in a state of wonderment. The women covered their faces when they saw us; but the children came crowding round us, clapping their little brown hands, and followed us down to the beach, dancing and jumping with glee.

I took the wounded men on board the Intrepid, and then went aboard the Bunder Abbas, where I had a great reception. Even the dismal cook and his still more dismal "mate" showed symptoms of pleasure, and Mr. Scarlett's face—for once—was beaming. His claw-like hand shot out and gripped mine like a vice. "I've had a terrible bad time of it for the last twenty-four hours, sir. Never thought to see any of you alive again. We all wanted to come along and lend a hand, but you know that we dursn't leave the 'B.A.', sir, don't you?"

He was terrified lest I should think he had failed me. Of course he hadn't.

I sent him, and as many men as could be spared, up to Commander Duckworth, in case they should be needed. They went ashore like a lot of boys, Mr. Scarlett one of the youngest, but had had enough of the sun and hot rocks before they eventually returned. By dark every camel had, somehow or other, been brought down to the village, and by midnight all the rifles and ammunition were aboard the Intrepid.

As I looked shorewards to the grim dark mass of mountains towering into the starlit sky, I was most thankful that I had not to spend another night on top of them. We all had had enough excitement to last a long time.

I went across to the Intrepid to gloat over the rifles piled in her battery, and had supper with the Baron. A most joyous and hilarious meal it was. Afterwards Commander Duckworth sent for me to give me orders to proceed to Muscat next morning.

This gave me the chance of putting in a good word for the villagers.

"It does seem precious hard," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "These hundred and thirty or more camels are not the slightest use to them; they dare not take them inland to sell, and those Arab chaps are certain to wipe out every man of them. But what can I do? I can't stay here for ever."

I suggested that he should let them have some of the captured rifles.

"They won't know how to use them," he said; "they'll only shoot each other."

However, he changed his mind next morning, for as I weighed anchor he signalled across: "Am sending fifty rifles and two thousand rounds of ammunition to the village ".

If the inoffensive, childlike villagers would only learn to use them properly, and would guard that gap night and day, they would be safe; but—I knew they would not. They were simply fishermen; they could not spare men from the boats; and after the first few days had passed without anything happening they would imagine themselves safe, or, still more likely, never take any precautions whatsoever, considering it wrong to interfere with "fate".

Just as the Bunder Abbas was shoving off, a native boat came paddling furiously from shore. I stopped my engines, and it came alongside with a couple of sheep—a parting present from my old head-man. Sending back a message of thanks, and dragging them aboard, I went ahead again, wound my way through that extraordinary channel in the cliffs to the open sea, and by sunset found myself once more anchored in Muscat harbour.

It was too late to report myself to the political agent that night, so I went next morning. He heard my news with great satisfaction, said very nice things about my part of the "show", and expressed the opinion that the loss of the valuable caravan would be such a blow to the inland tribes that the gun-running trade would be dead on that part of the coast for many months. He agreed with me that something ought to be done for the villagers, but shook his head when I suggested that the "B.A." might be spared to protect them for a few weeks.

"Can't anything be done for them?" I asked anxiously.

"The most I can do," he said, "is to let the local Arab camel dealers know that they have all those camels to sell—almost for the asking. Once they have got rid of them there won't be so much temptation for the Bedouins to attack them."

He did this, and during the afternoon six or seven large trading buggalows glided out of harbour. I hoped that they were off to my village, and, one passing close to the "B.A.", Mr. Scarlett hailed her to know where she was going.

"Yes," he nodded, after much shouting backward and forward; "they are all on their way there as quickly as they can. They aren't going to let the chance slip; they don't expect those Bedouins will leave the camels there many days."

Poor devils! Precious little profit would they make out of their assistance to us, and precious little would those traders give them.

We "coaled" and "watered" that day, having a good deal of trouble with the natives in the lighters. There was such a swell running into the harbour that we were banging against those lighters rather heavily, and the natives were often frightened to carry the coal on board. Jaffa was ashore, so Mr. Scarlett had to do all the persuading. He was in his element at "persuading". I don't believe he had any more feeling for those chaps than if they'd been dogs.

"There now, that comes of knowing the 'lingo'!" he said cheerfully, when at last the eighteen tons of coal had been stowed below, and he came up on deck to have a drink. "I told them a few things about their grandfathers and fathers, grandmothers and mothers, which fairly got them on the raw."

He was a very strange chap. He would be cheerful and talkative one moment, morbid and taciturn the next—one never knew. I often tried to chaff him out of these fits of depression, told him they were worse at full moon, and joked him about being in love. The moon may have had nothing to do with them; but I often noticed that he grew silent and morose towards sunset, and have often seen him go and hide himself in the cabin or turn his back to it.

Once I asked him why.

"I can't help it, sir; every time I see the sun setting I remember those shadows racing down from the mountains that time Jassim's wife was killed with this," and he tapped his left arm where the bracelet was.

He happened to be quite cheerful that evening, after his successful day's work with the lightermen, so when it was cool I simply forced him to come ashore.

"Come and have a walk; it will do you good," I said, and took him with me in the dinghy. Directly we landed, between the Custom House and the Sultan's palace, he started off along the shore at a great pace, pushing in and out of the Arabs busy loading and unloading dhows as if he never even saw them. As I caught up with him I saw that he was in one of his morbid fits again.

"What's wrong now?" I asked.

"This is the very spot where I stood eighteen years ago and saw the cursed snake for the second time. The Khan of Khamia came down here, and his wives were carried along that passageway—the arm with this bracelet on it showed up just there—there!" and he gripped my arm and pointed, his eyes glittering as if he could really see it again.

"Come along, man; don't be a fool!" I cried angrily; "people will think you mad," and dragged him reluctantly away through narrow, tortuous passages, jostling natives of every black or brown nationality under the sun, and pressing back occasionally against the walls of the miserable houses to let laden donkeys pass. The Eastern smell pervading everything delighted me; it was splendid; but I do not suppose he noticed it. At last we came to the main gate of the town, with its armed guard of ruffianly Arabs, and turned to the right along an open space where many horses were tethered, until we found ourselves close to a wretched mosque and a crowd of idlers lazily listening whilst a decrepit-looking old chap, standing on the steps, read from a paper he was holding. As we pressed through the people I caught the words "Khamia", when Mr. Scarlett stopped suddenly, gripped my arm fiercely, and literally pulled me away. He was shaking all over, and that muddy, frightened expression had come back.

"What the dickens is the matter now?" I asked, very irritated.

"Come back; get back to the 'B.A.,' sir; I can't breathe here."

He let go of my arm and simply ploughed his way through the crowd, and when clear of it actually began running.

I caught him up and stopped him. I was furious.

"Didn't you hear what he was reading?" he said, trembling. "It was the proclamation offering a reward for the 'Twin Death'?"

"That's nothing, man; you know they read it out every few weeks."

"I can't help it, sir; don't leave me, sir! For God's sake get me back to the 'B.A.'! That's not all. I've seen something else."

He would not tell me what, but walked as fast as he could, looking back every other second, with wild eyes, as if he was afraid of being followed. He walked so fast that I could barely keep up with him, and in one street or alleyway, which was fairly empty, he broke into a run again.

He was in a pitiable state of terror, and I was mighty glad when we did at last reach the beach, jump into a shore boat, and get aboard the Bunder Abbas.

It was not until he had had a glass of brandy that he began to calm down, and presently he apologized most abjectly for spoiling my walk.

I knew that I should never take him ashore again; I was very irritated. The whole business was so childish. He might take the bracelet off—I would guarantee to have it off in ten minutes—without the least risk.

I tried to argue with him; but it was not of the least use; he only became more agitated. He shut himself in our cabin, and I left him there till Percy announced dinner, with a grin of importance at having provided a special feast for us from one of the sheep those poor devils of villagers had given us.

"Kid-ney on to-ast," he said, his eyes and mouth wide open with delight.

"Come along, Mr. Scarlett!" I shouted, and tried to make him come out.

"I durs'n't yet, sir; I'll wait till it's dark."

"What on earth are you frightened of—now?"

"Of being seen, sir; I durs'n't show myself. Look at those boats there, sir," he said, pointing through the cabin door at some native boats which were passing—such boats were passing at all hours of the day. "He might be there."

"Who? Not that decrepit old chap we saw this afternoon?"

"No," he said, clutching the side of his bunk and looking half-mad; "Jassim! Jassim himself!"

"Jassim? You haven't seen him, have you?" I asked, startled.

"Yes," he groaned; "and he saw me! We came face to face in that crowd outside the mosque. I knew him directly, and he knew me—I'll swear it."

"You're mistaken, man; it couldn't have been he."

Mr. Scarlett shook his head. "No, no! I recollect his face as though it was yesterday—he has a scar on his upper lip, too. No, no! I couldn't make a mistake! He shot out an arm, felt above my elbow, then turned away without a word."

"Touched the bracelet; made sure it was still there, did he?"

Phew! I whistled, and shivered in spite of the terrible heat inside the cabin, for there was something so uncanny about the whole business. If Jassim had recognized him there might be danger—might be very great danger, unless Mr. Scarlett would let me or someone take the cursed thing off his arm. We could not hope that we had escaped by hurrying away. Two Englishmen couldn't walk through the town of Muscat without everyone knowing from where they came. There was not a mail steamer in the harbour, and even if there had been, and we might have been taken for passengers, the native boatmen who had brought us off from shore would give us away. It was very awkward.

"Kid-ney get cold, master," Percy pleaded, with a disappointed look in his face; so I went and tried to eat, sending Mr. Scarlett's share into the cabin.

I ate but little; he ate less. His nervousness and fright were infectious. I began to feel as nervous as a cat. Fearing lest Jassim—if indeed it was Jassim—should try to force his way on board, I gave very stringent orders that no native boat should be allowed to come alongside and no one allowed on board without my permission. I also stopped the leave of the native crew, lest they should be tampered with.

Webster, Moore, and Ellis, who acted as quartermasters, were provided with revolvers, and ordered to use them if anyone did attempt to come aboard during the night. I don't know what they thought had suddenly made this precaution necessary. Certainly the whole crew knew that something had happened, and every one of us was in a horrid state of nerves.

When the sun had set, Mr. Scarlett ventured out for a breath of the hot air. I had a terrible night with him. I had never seen anyone so unmanned as he was. Eventually he did go to sleep, but woke screaming in a hideous nightmare, and there was no more sleep after that—for either of us.

Next morning he would not be content until he had rigged a screen round the little upper deck where the cabin was, and there he stayed, hour after hour, peering through a slit in the canvas, with a pair of field-glasses at his side to scrutinize any approaching boat. This made me more "jumpy" than ever. But a screen would not keep Jassim away, nor did it, and during the forenoon a native boat came pulling towards us with a single Arab in the stern-sheets. Mr. Scarlett called out for me, and I found him yellow with fear, peeping through his screen.

"That's him, sir. He's coming."

"He can't do anything; I won't let him aboard!" I said. "For goodness' sake don't be such a confounded coward."

"But I am a coward! I told you I was a coward. I am, sir; I can't help it;" and he slunk into his cabin and fastened the door.

"No one allowed to come aboard," I reminded Ellis, who happened to be the quartermaster at the time. He waved off the boat, but the Arab forced the boatman to bring it closer, and as I saw him more clearly I gasped with amazement, for I had seen him before; he was the sheikh who had commanded the caravan we had captured—the red-bearded man to whose wounded son I had given water. There could be no possible mistake. His beard was not dyed now, but once having seen this man Jassim—-if it was Jassim—there was no forgetting him.

To meet him under these conditions was startling, to say the least of it, and I was quite thrown off my balance. To gain time I told Jaffa to ask him what he wanted.

A long conversation followed, and then Jaffa said: "Say he want very great talk—-must have very great talk."

In my own opinion it would have been better to let him come aboard, have the matter out once and for all, and hear what he proposed doing; but the door of the cabin overhead slid back and Mr. Scarlett whispered through the screen: "For God's sake, sir, send him away; don't let him come near me."

So, as my head really was rather dizzy with my discovery, I sent him away, and back he went, never moving a muscle of his face to show that he was disappointed.

I certainly was disappointed; one doesn't meet such people every day, and I should have liked to find out whether his son was alive. One thing, only, I determined on—not to let Mr. Scarlett know that it was his caravan of rifles we had captured, because I knew this would only add to his fright and his fear of impending calamity.

That afternoon a letter was brought off addressed in sprawling letters to the "Officer with black beard, His Britannic Majesty's ship, Bunder Abbas."

The quartermaster brought it to me and I took it up to Mr. Scarlett, who seized it with trembling fingers and tore it open. Presently he called me to come to him.

"I've translated it, sir. He wants the snake; he offers me five thousand rupees if only I will let him take it off my arm. He says he does not want to do me any harm, but that he is desperately hard up and must and will have it. It's really a threat, sir," he said, his hands trembling violently.

I guessed why he was so desperately "hard up", though I did not tell Mr. Scarlett, but spent the whole day trying to argue with the poor chap, going over the same old arguments which Baron Popple Opstein and I had used so often—with the added inducement of his now being able to make money by getting rid of the snake.

Every now and again he would almost yield. Then he would remember seeing Jassim's wife dying and that bluejacket clawing his way down to the sea, and he would rock himself from side to side, like a woman in despair, shouting at me that he would sooner be killed than die such a death.

I really thought that he was going mad—as his predecessor had done.

So when Jassim came next morning I sent him away again. Not a flicker of disappointment crossed his face, but as I watched the retreating boat and his motionless back I could not help feeling that we had done a very foolish thing indeed, and that trouble would certainly follow.

Not a soul stirred out of the Bunder Abbas all day; there was a strange sensation of impending trouble, and as darkness fell and the lights of the gloomy, unruly town twinkled out, I felt an unpleasant, gruesome feeling that we had let him go, had lost touch with him, and should not now know when danger threatened or from where. Whether my mind had gradually been influenced by association with Mr. Scarlett or not, yet although I did my utmost to induce myself to believe that there was no danger, the effort was extremely unsuccessful. Jassim now had good reasons for revenge on both of us, and he badly needed money. If he had turned out to be an insignificant nonentity or a mere cadging loafer whose only trace of his former power and dignities remained in his remembrance of them I should not have feared him; but this Jassim was evidently a man of great influence still (you must remember that gun-running or slave-running were then the only aristocratic occupations the sheikhs of the various tribes indulged in), and must even now have powerful friends scattered everywhere who would be only too glad to assist him.

I do not mind saying that it caused me most unpleasant thought, and I was more than ever sorry that we had rebuffed him twice already.

Luckily the Intrepid came in next morning, and I was extremely pleased to receive orders to return to Kalat al Abeid for a fortnight.

Whilst our lascars were raising steam I saw the commander going ashore to call on the political agent, and on his way back he came aboard the Bunder Abbas.

"The political agent's delighted with our haul," he said, as I saluted him. "He's mentioning your name in his dispatches to the Indian Government. You ought to get something out of it. You got my orders. Well, you can go there for a fortnight; you can't be spared for longer. Don't get into trouble. You can finish off those leopards. I killed a couple; there are plenty more."

I thanked him very warmly, and as he was shoving off he called out: "They're getting nervous at Jask again. Some brigands of 'sorts' from the hills have been cutting the telegraph line and threatening to burn the telegraph station."

"Is nothing going to be done?" I asked.

"No," he called back. "We've advised them to send away those two ladies—two are there, I hear—but nothing else. They're always crying 'wolf', and we can't keep a ship tied to the telegraph-posts all the time."

I had intended telling him that Jassim was in Muscat, but this news made me forget him and spoilt my pleasure at getting away from Muscat and being able to help my friends the villagers. It made me very uncomfortable to think of those two fragile ladies exposed to such dangers in those sunbaked telegraph buildings on the little promontory of Jask.

We were not ready for sea until next morning, and that night I dreamt that I had to rescue those two ladies, or, rather, choose which I should rescue, and I picked up the little yellow-haired lady with the grey eyes and tried to carry her down to the Bunder Abbas; but my foot wouldn't move properly, and an Arab with a flaming-red beard and a knife in his hand would have caught me had I not woke up.

However, if one always worried about dangers which might happen at some uncertain future one's time would be pretty well occupied. When once we were out at sea, and the little "B.A." was tumbling about with the tail end of the south-west monsoon swell sliding under her, our cares and troubles seemed quickly blown away. The whole crew had caught some of yesterday's gloom, and they too were now as cheery as schoolboys. Even Moore and Ellis—still enemies—exchanged a few friendly remarks, and the dismal cook and his "mate" chattered to each other as they carried on their everlasting scouring of pots and pans. Mr. Scarlett was a different being altogether. He was his natural colour again, and I could have sworn that he was fatter than the day before. As for Percy, his glistening brown cheeks were split with a smile which extended from ear to ear. He knew that there had been something wrong, that his hero had been in some danger, and his two solemn great eyes followed Mr. Scarlett wherever he moved. To him the gunner was the most wonderful thing his little world held, and if you had seen him squatting in a shady corner outside our cabin, whitening Mr. Scarlett's shoes or helmet, daubing here and there, then waiting for the damp places to dry in the sun, holding them up to see the effect and trying to make them look whiter than any shoes or helmet had been before, you would have felt a great liking for the little chap in his queer surroundings so far from his home and people.

All that day we steamed along that tremendous coast line of cliffs, and whenever some particularly barren rock stuck out into the sea I could not help, for the life of me, picturing the white telegraph buildings at Jask, and remembering the fluttering of a white handkerchief I had once seen waving "good-bye" from the corner near the flagstaff.

"No other tune you know?" Mr. Scarlett asked me cynically, whilst we were thoroughly enjoying the lunch Percy had furnished. "You've been whistling and humming the same old tune for the last three hours."

I'm hanged if I'd known it at the time, but it was "Two Eyes of Grey". Well, to know that those treacherous Afghans were threatening that isolated telegraph station was enough to make anyone think of the little grey-eyed lady imprisoned there.

In the afternoon we passed quite close to one of those buggalows which had gone to Kalat al Abeid to purchase the camels, and her deck was crowded with them. We met another as we threaded our way through the channel cut in the cliffs, also laden with camels. She was drifting out with the tide, and we had some difficulty in passing her.

When we anchored off the village itself, three more were half in, half out of the water, and we could see our friends the villagers trying to persuade more stubborn brutes to climb aboard along sloping gangways.

The head-man was along in a jiffy, bringing another sheep with him. I hardly recognized him for a moment in a green turban and a scarlet burnous with a flaming scarlet belt, into which he had stuck silver-mounted daggers (the green turban I found out afterwards was the one Jassim had lost that awful night, and I remembered that he was not wearing it when he followed his wounded son through the gap). Across his knees he had one of the rifles we had given him—each man in the boat had one—and he was treating it as if it was a baby or something alive. When he stepped on board, all smiles and friendliness, he brought it with him, and kept on patting it affectionately, shaking a bag slung from his shoulder by a piece of coarse string, and smiling like a big baby when the cartridges inside it rattled.

He was vastly amusing in his new finery. He told Jaffa, for my edification, that "men of Kalat al Abeid no fish—so much good things no work any more—Arab trader from Muscat bring so much food—dates, rice, cloth, beads, bracelets for women—brass cooking-pots; never want nothing no more. No fear Bedouins—taffenk—fishenk[#]—kill them all."

[#] Rifles, cartridges.

Jaffa soon found out that, as I thought, he never bothered to keep even a few men posted in the gap in the mountains. "It was absurd to keep them there in the daytime: surely they could see the Bedouins coming down from the ravine and shoot them; and as for at night, why, everyone knew that devils and horned dragons breathing flame came and went through that gap during the dark hours."

If he had spent the night with us up there, whilst the Intrepid's shells were bursting, he might have had some foundation for his yarn.

At any rate, not a man of the village dared stay there after dark, and it was useless work trying to chaff the old chap out of his superstitions. He certainly had not seen any devils or horned dragons breathing flame—no one alive had; but their fathers had told them about them, and that was good enough for him.

"Sometimes hear big noise of wind rushing through the gap," Jaffa interpreted, as the old man evidently tried to back his superstition with some tangible facts.

"Well, ask him about the leopards. Tell him I want to go there and shoot some," I told Jaffa.

He was quite willing to talk about them, but did not want to give me the trouble of climbing all that way. He patted his rifle, pointed to those of his men, and Jaffa explained, without a smile on his face: "The white sea-lord shall recline in the shade of my hut whilst I and my men go and shoot leopard—bring back plenty skins, and plenty claws to make necklace for white sea-lord."

"But the white sea-lord jolly well wants to do the shooting himself," I laughed, "and to-morrow too."

When this was interpreted to the old man—I must call him sheikh, now that he was so important—he smiled, as though he thought me rather a mad ass.

"Well, tell him I'll come ashore to-morrow an hour before sunrise, and we'll have a great day together."

That was arranged satisfactorily, so I gave him a packet of cigarettes, and he went ashore, still patting and fondling his rifle, to hurry up the embarkment of the remaining camels.

CHAPTER XII

Mr. Scarlett Bares his Arm

Mr. Scarlett was in such high spirits at getting safely away from Muscat that he declared his intention of coming shooting with me, and he did. I left Webster, the corporal of marines, in charge of the "B.A.", and took Moore, the petty officer, Hartley, the lazy signal-man (who was so fat I knew he'd sweat his soul out climbing up the mountains), and the two marines, Jones and Gamble. Of course Jaffa came with us; we could do nothing without our aristocratic Persian interpreter.

Early as it was, we found the shore swarming with the villagers, helping the crews of those dhows to embark the last of the captured camels, and making enough noise to prevent any respectable devil or horned dragon venturing within a hundred miles of them.

When they saw us they hastily rushed back to their huts, and by the time we had landed and found the sheikh waiting for us near his white-domed well, they came running back—the whole crowd of them—every man with a rifle and a bag of cartridges. At a word from the beaming sheikh they began firing their rifles to welcome us. How it was that no one was hit was a marvel, for they knew less about handling them than I do of a sewing-machine.

You may bet your last dollar that I was not going shooting with that little lot, and it took Jaffa at least a quarter of an hour of talking before they stole away to their huts, and came sorrowfully back without their rifles, but with much more useful spears and sticks.

I asked Jaffa how he had managed this.

"Tell them in England country sheikh ask great man shoot—insult if villagers shoot too."

I could not help laughing at the idea of a day's "shoot" at home when all the beaters from the countryside carried rifles. It would make some "shoots" a good deal more exciting than they often are.

The sheikh himself would have sent his rifle away as well, though I saw that it would almost break his heart to do so. However, I explained by gestures that I wanted him to shoot with me, and his pride and joy were comical to see.

Eventually we shoved off for the ravine, followed by hooded women bearing huge chatties of water, and every "toddler" in the village carrying a bigger or smaller bundle of dry date-palm leaves. It was as quaint a shooting party as ever I had seen.

As we traversed the rocky slopes across which the Intrepids had advanced to the attack of the mouth of the ravine, the natives spread out to pick up battered bullets and empty cartridge cases. They were lying there in hundreds, and every big stone had one or two white marks where bullets had struck it. At the mouth of the ravine, at the spot where the Arabs had first taken up a position, the stones and rocks were white with splashes and fragments of nine-pounder shells, and fuses and shrapnel bullets lay among them. Close by were three cairns with wooden crosses. These were the graves of the three who had been killed, and the sheikh explained that he and his people had piled up those big stones so that the wolves and jackals should not disturb them.

Passing through the ravine we once more entered that vast hollow, left the sunshine behind us, and craned our necks upwards to see the gap. Six days ago, when I was there, it and the path had been full of living creatures and ringing with shouts from one zigzag to another, as the bluejackets and villagers tried to bring down the camels. Now the gloom was haunted with silence and loneliness. Except for two or three bloated vultures, which flew heavily upwards and disappeared over the rim, not a thing moved. The not-yet-whitened skeletons of several camels showed what a feast they and the jackals had made.

As we did on that first memorable day, so we did on this. The villagers were ordered to remain at the bottom whilst the sheikh, Mr. Scarlett, myself, and the rest of the men climbed up the zigzag. We left Hartley below; he solemnly shook his head when he saw what kind of a path it was, and, as he was already pretty well "done up", I let him stay. He promptly went to sleep.

When we did reach the top, walked through the gap, and looked down into the valleys beyond, I almost expected to see the huge snake of a caravan wriggling up to us again. I showed Mr. Scarlett where we had first seen it, and pointed out the rocks behind which we had crouched nearly all that day; also the rock on which Jaffa had stood calling out in the dark: "Khalli bunduk 'ak! Ma kattle kum! Ist agel!"

He was very interested, but the sheikh was still more impatient, so we spread out along the crest just as we had done before, and then he gave the signal for the villagers to beat up towards us.

I don't know what I imagined they would do. They were not flies, or even goats, so I could hardly expect them to climb up the precipice; but what actually occurred was that, after spreading over the whole of the bottom of the "coffee-cup", yelling and throwing stones into any places likely to conceal a leopard, they all made for the zigzag path and came up it very swiftly, one behind the other, yelling like fury, beating the rocks with their spears as they passed them, the ones in rear beating the rocks which had already been struck a hundred times already, just as vigorously as the first. Occasionally they threw blazing bundles of date-palm leaves into crevices and caves; but, except for this and the noise they made, their ideas of what was wanted were very laughable.

The sheikh had lain down close to me. Presently he gave an exclamation and pointed. I saw a leopard slinking round a rock just ahead of some shouting villagers; he was at least four hundred yards away, and before I could stop the old man he had fired his rifle, regardless of the fact that if his aim was anywhere in that direction he was far more likely to hit one of his own people than the leopard. I need not have worried myself. The bullet struck a rock close below us and shrieked away into the sky, whilst the recoiling butt struck his cheek. First of all he looked to see whether the leopard was dead, and as it had disappeared behind a rock he was as pleased as "Punch"; then he felt his cheek and patted his rifle reprovingly as if it were a naughty boy. But he smacked it a moment after, when the leopard appeared again, bounding up the rocks.

I roared with laughter, which of course upset him. Holding the rifle more gingerly than ever, and keeping his face well out of the danger line (he could not possibly have looked along his sights) he fired again, and of course "thump" went the butt against his shoulder. At that he laid the rifle down, sat up, and gazed scornfully at it, jabbering something to me which I, of course, did not understand.

The leopard was now standing on a rock, entirely unaware that he had been fired at, watching the advancing beaters, twitching his tail, and uncertain what to do.

I nodded to the sheikh to watch how it should be done, took a steady aim, and fired.

The animal was two hundred yards away, if an inch, and I did not expect to hit him, but luck was with me. He sprang up, pawing the air, gave two or three huge bounds from rock to rock, then just missed the edge of a boulder, clawed frantically for a moment, and fell on the zigzag path dead.

The wonder and amazement showing in the old man's eyes were the greatest compliment I had ever had paid to my skill. He handed me his rifle and wanted to try mine, taking it with an awed expression as if it were a live thing. Then he noticed the difference in the breech (mine was a Lee-Metford, his a Mauser), and a cunning smile flickered across his face, as if that was the reason why mine had behaved so much better. His eyes simply danced from rock to rock, watching for something to appear, so that he could show me that with the same rifle he was just as good a shot as myself. Presently a wolf or jackal trotted along a narrow ledge of rock below us. He threw up my rifle, pressing the trigger at the same moment, and, as he never even held it tightly, and was sitting up on his haunches, was nearly knocked over by the recoil.

Where the bullet went goodness knows, but his look of abject disappointment when he recovered himself and saw the beast still running along was too comical for words. He gave the rifle back to me, waved his hands as if to say that he would have nothing more to do with such works of Satan, folded his cloak round him, and sat sulkily indifferent. His green turban and crimson cloak made him a quaint figure in the glaring sunlight.

The others fired a few shots (though at what I could not see) and I only hoped that they would not shoot the villagers. Nothing more appeared for us to shoot at, till presently a vulture, coming from nowhere, perched heavily on a rock not fifty yards away—a splendid target for a rifle. He was quite indifferent to our presence.

I made the sheikh lie down—he was as excited as a child again—showed him how to hold the rifle, press it into his shoulder, and look along the sights; the bird watching us all the time, looking like a ragged tramp sitting for his photograph.

When he at last fired, the bullet hit a rock at least ten yards below the bird; but the report frightened it and it flew away.

The old man evidently thought he had wounded it, for he recovered his affability and patted the rifle approvingly, smiling at me.

Whether or no there were as many leopards as we had believed, at any rate we saw no more there, and presently they brought my dead one up to the gap and commenced skinning him. Whilst they were doing this the sheikh led us down to some craggy rocks on the other slope, and a leopard was frightened out of them but broke back through the frightened villagers, and only gave me a long and hopeless shot whilst he was travelling very fast. I am sure the old gentleman was rather pleased that he wasn't the only one who missed.

This was a disappointing day's shooting, but the exercise did us all the good in the world, and we went back to the village quite content. As we drew near the villagers rushed ahead to exchange their spears and sticks for their beloved rifles, came back to meet us, and fired another feu de joie.

At a word from Mr. Scarlett the sheikh, seizing a stick, rushed in among them and whacked left and right till they stopped. If he realized the danger it was a very plucky thing to do, because bullets were whizzing all round us.

It was very evident that if the villagers went on expending their precious cartridges as they had this day, they would soon have none left to keep the Bedouins away. This waste of good ammunition so outraged Mr. Scarlett's professional feelings that he actually spent the greater part of the next week teaching them the elements of rifle shooting. I had never seen him so happy for so many days together.

Under the shade of some "nabac" trees close to the well he rigged a tripod and a sand-bag for a rifle to rest on, painted some black bull's-eyes on the side of one of the huts, and every evening showed the villagers how to look along their sights and get them in a line with the bull's-eye.

At the end of the week he rigged a target some way along the beach and invited me to see the results of his training. I do not suppose that there was a single man, woman, or child but had come down to join in the excitement. They were all gathered round the firing point, some eighty or one hundred yards from the target, jabbering noisily—the children not being more childish than the "grown-ups".

Then in absolute silence—even the children held their breath—the first man lay down and aimed very carefully. He fired, and every single soul scampered pell-mell along the beach to the target to see where it had been hit.

In spite of actually seeing most of the bullets striking the sand, they had the most implicit confidence in each other's marksmanship; and I nearly burst myself with laughing, when, after a little while, they began to tire of running to and fro after every shot, and actually gathered round the target itself with their heads as close to the black bull's-eye as they could get them, waiting for the next shot.

Mr. Scarlett managed with difficulty to bring them back, but at this rate the millennium would have arrived by the time each man had fired the three rounds he allowed them. As a matter of fact this exhibition of the result of his training did take three evenings, and I do not remember that any man hit any part of the canvas more than twice. Most of them never hit it at all. However, they were not in the least disappointed; they were all too ignorant and stupid to mind what became of the bullet so long as the noise and recoil were big enough. Not even when Mr. Scarlett put the target four hundred yards or so farther along the beach, and he and I fired a dozen rounds and hit the bull's-eye seven times between us, did they show much appreciation. Every one of them—even the children—put their fingers in the holes and shouted with glee; but they evidently considered the whole performance due to magic—not our magic, but the rifles' magic.

The sheikh refused to fire, evidently not wanting to disgrace himself before the tribe, although his explanation, given to Jaffa, was that it was quite unnecessary—"that if he could hit a vulture at twenty paces, of course he could hit a huge piece of canvas."

Well, even Mr. Scarlett could not be expected to train those poor ignorant fishermen in three or four days. I do believe that they imagined that all that was necessary was to put a cartridge in the rifle, show it the object, and pull the trigger. Allah would look after the bullet. If he did not mean it to hit—well it wouldn't, that was all—and Mr. Scarlett and Jaffa had not sufficient command of their language to make them believe otherwise.

Even after this fatuous display the sheikh confidently told Jaffa that he pitied any poor Bedouins who tried to attack his town—town! mind you; not collection of hovels, as it actually was. His own house and the dome-shaped well were the only two structures you could lean against without risk of falling through the sides. He and his silly simpletons of villagers really believed that they were now a formidable tribe—with their rifles, their new finery, their sacks of dates, and the flocks of sheep the Arab traders had given them in exchange for the camels. They suffered badly from "swollen heads", were too proud to fish, and loafed about the village with their rifles and silver-mounted daggers—doing nothing. The women were just as foolish over the stores of food and the unaccustomed finery they now had, and all had lost any fear of the Bedouins swooping down through the gap to take revenge.

Every camel except one had been taken away, and that one the sheikh kept for his own use, fitting it out with the gorgeous trappings belonging to Jassim's own riding camel—the one I had killed on the zigzag path. When he was perched, insecurely and uncomfortably, on top of all this splendour, he thought himself the finest fellow in the world, in spite of the fact that the brute could only be induced to move, and that only at a snail's pace, by being pulled along by his halter.

He used to mount it and come along with me when I went shooting along the mountain slopes; but he could never keep up with me, however much the attendant villagers hauled on the head-rope.

One evening, as our fortnight's stay was drawing to a close, we saw from the Bunder Abbas two little dots moving rapidly down from the mouth of the ravine. As they drew nearer we saw that they were two camels, and that a man was riding the first and leading the other. Darkness swallowed them up; but next morning there were three camels kneeling under the shade of the dark-green "nabac" trees alongside the well—the sheikh's and the two strange ones. And whilst we were wondering who the man could have been, a boat paddled off with a letter for Mr. Scarlett. As he caught sight of the handwriting he actually seemed to shrivel; the lines in his face became drawn and haggard, his eyes positively sank into their sockets, and that horrid, frightened, muddy colour spread over his face and down his neck. I knew then who had written the letter—Jassim.

Mr. Scarlett staggered into the cabin and slid the door across. It seemed hours before he opened it—just a crack—and beckoned to me.

"Same thing, sir, only more threatening. Says he will take it off without hurting. That he must have it, and he'll give me still more money."