CHAPTER XIV

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*We Deal with Jassim*

The packing in the high-pressure piston-rod gland blew out again as we anchored at Muscat. As a matter of fact, the whole of our engines required a thorough overhaul after practically four months of almost continuous steaming; and though the lascar engine-drivers had done their best--a very poor best--it was now entirely beyond their capabilities to put things to "rights", and make all the necessary readjustments and the _Bunder Abbas_ again fit for sea.

In these circumstances, and as neither the political agent nor Commander Duckworth had anything very pressing for us to do, artificers were sent across from the _Intrepid_ to carry out the necessary repairs. Whilst they were opening out the engines, working and sweating down below, there was, of course, but little to do on deck, and I had at first a very pleasant, lazy time indeed--pleasant, at any rate, after five o'clock in the evening. Before five o'clock the heat was much too great except to pant and perspire under the awnings; after that hour one's muscles began to call out for exercise. Then, with Popple Opstein and the rest of the _Intrepid's_ officers, we would often pull across to a sandy beach--where no sharks ventured--about a mile from the rock on which the southern of those two old Portuguese forts stood, and have grand bathing picnics--in and out of the water for a couple of hours at a time. Occasionally fifty or sixty of the men would come with us and drag the seine-net, for the sea was simply alive with fish. If we did not do this, we would go up to the political agent's house and play tennis in the compound there--on a concrete court--in the most terrible glare; or perhaps we would wander out through the main gates of the town and scramble about the ravines and defiles leading inland.

I have never in my life been in such a hot place as this was. The little white town of Muscat is surrounded by bare, razor-backed, volcanic, rocky ridges; the harbour itself is enclosed by more black, naked cliffs, and these seem to collect the violent heat of the sun all day to give it out all night. The temperature in the shade on board seldom fell below a hundred degrees during the day, and seldom dropped more than four or five degrees at night. Sleep under these conditions was very difficult, very unrefreshing, and often I have tumbled and sweated on my grass mat till daybreak, kept awake by the oppressive heat and the weird chants of the watchmen calling across the harbour from the towers of the two great forts.

Several of my men went sick. Little wounds (a scratched mosquito bite, for instance) simply would not heal; and Wiggins, the broken-rib man, had to be sent down to Karachi suffering from fever. He was very loath to go, poor chap.

For the first two or three days Mr. Scarlett was quite happy. I let him take some men ashore to paint the name of the launch on the rocky face of one of the sides of the harbour. He painted it in white letters, four feet long--"BUNDER ABBAS"--among the names of a hundred other ships which had done the same during the last twenty years, and this kept his mind occupied; but after he had finished, he shrank into his usual saturnine self, his dark eyes seemed to sink farther back than ever beneath his shaggy eyebrows, and he spent his whole time watching lest Jassim should come again. For fear of seeing him, and for fear of any violence, he never ventured on the mainland.

Jassim had sent him another letter, increasing his offer to fifteen thousand rupees if only Mr. Scarlett would let him have the bracelet. My chum happened to be on board when the letter arrived, and we both went over the same old arguments as before, doing our utmost to persuade him to take the risk, and holding out before him all he could do with the money--a thousand pounds would be a fortune to him--and how with that and his pension he could retire and live comfortably ever after. If he had been an ordinary warrant-officer we might have argued with him successfully. But he was not; he was more than half-Arab, by nature and upbringing if not by birth; and if our arguments were met at first by a half-shrinking consent, the possibility of a fatal result would so terrify him immediately afterwards that he always ended with a flat, sullen refusal.

"Kismet," he would groan, and once he had used that word we knew it was impossible to move him.

If he did agree to accept the increased offer we were to hoist a red flag; and the mere knowledge that evening that Jassim's gloomy eyes were watching us from shore, awaiting his signal, made even my chum and myself feel nervous. It drove Mr. Scarlett into the locked cabin, where he stewed all night.

As you can imagine, this state of things was bad for his health, and when one day he ran a rusty nail into the palm of his left hand the wound festered, and the hand and the whole of his arm swelled tremendously.

He was so ill that Nicholson, the staff surgeon of the _Intrepid_, determined to give him chloroform, and make deep cuts into both hand and arm. The snake, of course, would have to be exposed during the operation, and Mr. Scarlett was so desperately anxious that no one else should know anything about it that he only consented when Nicholson promised (I had told him about it) to come across to the _Bunder Abbas_, and, if Popple Opstein and I would stand by and give him a hand, do it there. He came that very evening, when the great heat of the day was over, and we (with Percy terrified and sad) cleared a space on the little upper deck, just outside the cabin, for the operation. Having kicked Percy down the steps and screened the deck from observation, Nicholson began.

It is not necessary to go into all the details, but when Mr. Scarlett, lying on the deck, was thoroughly insensible, we unwound the bandage and found the beastly snake almost sunk in a deep groove of the mottled, swollen skin, clinging ever so tightly. I noticed Nicholson run his finger along it until he came to the head, when he tried to pass one finger under the jaw, but my nerves were very much on the stretch. I saw him pick up a knife, and, not being used to such things, turned away my head. It was not till Mr. Scarlett had given one or two sudden, half-conscious moans that I turned round again. There were the deep cuts in the arm and hand, but--I almost started out of my skin--the snake had disappeared, and only the deep groove round the arm remained, the scale marks showing how tightly the snake must have buried itself.

Nicholson quietly pointed to a corner of the deck close to the funnel, and there, sparkling in a patch of sunlight coming under the edge of the awning, was the bracelet--writhing, coiling, and uncoiling, drawing back, and striking with its head.

Popple Opstein's face was blue, his mouth wide open, his eyes staring at it, his great red hands shaking violently.

Nicholson went on with his work.

"Good God!" I at last managed to gasp. "Did it bite him or you?"

Nicholson did not answer. Mr. Scarlett was recovering consciousness now, and he was working very rapidly. Popple Opstein and I had to fly round and do this and that as he bade us. There was no time to ask questions or answer them.

At last Nicholson, starting to bandage the arm, asked for a piece of rope--a couple of feet of signal halyard.

"Now a needle and thread," he called, and, when I fetched them, sewed the bandage very securely.

Not till then had I time to look at the snake again.

It was now lying perfectly still, coiled closely like a watch-spring, the flat head pressed over the coils and the light flickering in its green opal eyes and playing on the enamelled scales.

Nicholson, busy holding Mr. Scarlett's head, jerked out: "Hide it!

"Pick it up," he said irritably, as my chum hesitated to touch it; "the confounded thing won't hurt you."

Popple Opstein stooped and took hold of it very gingerly. As it did not move he held it in the palm of his hand, and we were both examining its marvellous beauty when Nicholson again jerked out: "Hide it somewhere--lock it up--Mr. Scarlett's coming round--he mustn't see it."

I took it very nervously from Popple Opstein, and in the excited state of my nerves, its scales seemed to press themselves into my hand and wriggle. I could only just prevent myself dropping it, and darted into the cabin and locked it in my one drawer.

"Now, help me to lift him," Nicholson called out, and in a couple of minutes Mr. Scarlett lay moaning in his bunk, with the bad arm swathed in cotton-wool and bandages.

"He'll do all right now. Give me a drink, and have this mess cleared up," Nicholson said gruffly.

"How did you do it?" I asked him.

"Feel that," he answered, and with a blood-stained finger and thumb pinched the end of one of my fingers.

I winced--he might have had hold of me with pincers.

I shouted for Percy, and sang out for Moore to send up a couple of hands, and whilst Nicholson kept an eye on his patient my chum told me what had happened.

"He took up his knife. I set my teeth; but just as I thought he was going to use it he dropped it, and before I could wink an eyelash he'd nipped the jaws of the snake--just as he nipped your finger--bent four inches of its neck right away from the arm and, with the fingers of the other hand, swept round under the coils and unwound it. For a moment or two he held it in the air, the jaws in between his finger and thumb, the body coiling and twisting--I could hardly breathe--then he threw it away where you saw it, and it lashed about like a live thing. It's done now; what danger there was is over. Won't he be thankful?"

"We'll tell him directly he's round," I said. "My country, won't he be pleased! He'll be a new man."

Nicholson, coming out of the cabin, sang out: "No, you won't, unless you want to kill him. He's bad enough now, and he'll fancy the swelling is due to poison, whatever we tell him. He must not know until he's well again. As many people die of sheer fright, after being bitten, as from the poison itself."

"Is that why you coiled the signal halyard round the groove?" we both asked excitedly.

"Of course it was. He'll feel it under the bandage and think the snake's still there. I sewed the bandage so that he couldn't take it off to make certain. Don't you tell him till I give the word."

A very anxious week followed, for Mr. Scarlett was so ill that he had to go aboard the _Intrepid_. Whilst he was away, several more letters came from Jassim, and at last Jassim himself came aboard.

On the chance of his coming I had given very strict orders that no one should say where Mr. Scarlett had gone, and when I took him all round the _Bunder Abbas_ his face fell as he realized that he was not on board. Not a word would he say about the snake, never so much as a hint to Jaffa; but as he left the ship he spoke to him, looking at me, and Jaffa repeated: "Twenty thousand rupees". I could not resist asking him, through Jaffa (who, if he had a shrewd suspicion that he was the red-bearded leader of the caravan, never mentioned it), how his son was--the wounded man who had been carried through the gap.

At the question Jassim gave me a glance of such terrible hatred that I knew at once that the poor chap was dead, and that he blamed me for it.

This could not help but worry me, and another worry came along about this time: there was disquieting news from Jask. Mr. Fisher, the acting political agent, had telegraphed across that the Baluchis were causing trouble and constantly threatening to come down from the hills and attack the place. The land wire had been cut in several places, and a party of native employees had been beaten and robbed about twenty-five miles to the eastward. He had borrowed a few of the border police from the Mir of Old Jask, but they were such brigands and so much of a nuisance that he had sent them back again.

It really made me angry to think of keeping Miss Borsen and Mrs. Fisher there. I actually asked if the "_B.A._" could not go as soon as ever her repairs had been effected, but Commander Duckworth shook his head.

"It's just as it always is at this time of year," he said. "Those tribesmen keep on threatening, hoping to get 'backsheesh'. They do it every year; but nothing will come of it. They won't risk their skins."

However, this did not relieve my anxiety. I seemed to have a personal interest in little Miss Borsen, because, I suppose, she had come out from England with me, and possibly because we had quarrelled.

One day Nicholson signalled across that he and Popple Opstein were bringing Mr. Scarlett across that evening. They came, he looking desperately ill, although his arm was practically well. When we four were alone he pulled out another letter--Jassim had evidently soon found where he had gone.

"He offers me twenty thousand rupees," he said wearily. "It's a lot of money."

He thought that we should commence the same old arguments again, but, Nicholson winking at me, I went into the cabin, unlocked my drawer, and brought out the bracelet. I handed it to Nicholson, for it was "up" to him to tell the good news. He simply laid it on Mr. Scarlett's thin knees and said quietly: "It's been off your arm for ten days. I took it off when you had the operation."

Mr. Scarlett shrank from it and clutched his arm. "But it's there--I can feel it--I've felt it a hundred times in these last days."

Nicholson smiled, pulled up his sleeve, cut through the bandage, and showed him the signal halyard.

Mr. Scarlett gave a wild look at each of us, dropped the snake on the deck, bolted into the cabin, and we heard him sobbing like a child.

Nicholson yelled for Percy. "Brandy and soda for Mr. Scarlett."

"For all of us," I said, because we needed it.

Eventually Mr. Scarlett came back and asked to see the bracelet, handling it tenderly. He was much too disturbed to talk coherently, or to thank Nicholson or either of us. It was pitiful to watch him. He had not found his "bearings"; did not realize all that it meant to him, and kept on rolling up his sleeve to look at his bare arm as if he did not believe his own eyes.

He gave way again, buried his face in his lean hands, lying half over the table, which shook with his sobs. It was very distressing to watch.

"Can't we hoist that red flag, sir?" he asked presently, lifting a haggard face.

I nodded.

He jumped to our signal locker, picked out a red-and-white flag, tore off the white part like a maniac, bent it to the halyard, and hoisted it to our little yardarm, where it drooped in the heated air. Seizing a pair of glasses he watched the shore as though he expected Jassim to come paddling out. But Jassim did not come, and in his nervous condition Mr. Scarlett worked himself into a terrible state of agitation lest he had disappeared, and was, even now, preparing violent measures to regain the bracelet.

I think that before Nicholson went away he had taken the precaution of giving him a very strong sleeping-draught, because he eventually became calmer and went to sleep.

When he was asleep I took the bracelet away from him and locked it in my drawer, hoping most devoutly that Jassim would soon come and claim it; and next morning, without saying anything to him, I took the precaution of sending the bracelet across to the _Intrepid_, so that the sight of it should not upset him, and that Jassim, if he came, should not be able to terrorize him into giving it away before the money was produced.

Jassim did come that day, and his manner was mysterious and threatening; nor did I like the look in his eyes when Mr. Scarlett bared his arm and he realized that the bracelet had disappeared and that the gunner had not now the fear of taking it off.

Jassim evidently wanted to get rid of me; but I would not go.

"When he puts down his twenty thousand rupees he shall have it, not before," I told Mr. Scarlett. "The bracelet is not on board, and I shall not tell you where it is. Never you mind where it is." I stopped him enquiring. "You tell him to bring his money and he shall have it."

As I imagined, Jassim could not produce the money, nor do I think that he ever intended doing so, hoping all along so to work on the gunner's fears that he could get it for nothing. The two of them began talking very excitedly, waving their arms and thumping the little table. From the fierce looks which Jassim occasionally turned on me I was evidently being talked about, and was not very popular in that quarter.

I saw that hateful muddy colour spread over Mr. Scarlett's face and his eyes narrow with fear. He turned to me, hardly able to speak.

"For God's sake, sir, give up the wretched thing," he stuttered. "Tell me where it is and I will give it him. I don't want any of his money; all I want is to be quit of it."

"When you've got your money, not before," I said.

"But, sir, remember we are not in England. He swears he'll kill you; that if you land he will kill you; if you don't he'll find other ways of killing you. He won't touch me, because I gave his wife that drink of water. But, sir, it's different with you."

"I gave his son water a month ago," I said, with a sudden inspiration.

Mr. Scarlett was too much agitated to enquire when or where. He turned to Jassim and asked him something. Jassim replied bitterly.

"He says you shot him, and he died; the drink of water made no difference. You don't know these people out here," he implored. "Don't run any risk. I don't want the money, indeed I don't."

Jassim had risen to his feet and stood not three feet from me, glaring at me as if he would willingly kill me then and there. I saw in his eyes that what Mr. Scarlett had said was true. I don't know what made me do it--I certainly never thought, and regretted it immediately afterwards--but I suddenly locked my arms round him, and before he could make a move I had tripped him over the railings and dropped him overboard.

The boat which had brought him off was close there, and he scrambled on board like a drowned rat, sat down in the stern-sheets, folded his clinging wet burnous round him, and, without deigning to turn his head in our direction, was paddled ashore.

"You've done it now, sir," Mr. Scarlett moaned, burying his face in his hands and sprawling across the table. "For God's sake let's get away from Muscat."

I tried to pacify him by pointing out that if Jassim killed me he would lose all chance of finding the snake. "He won't be such a fool as that," I said.

"He'll want revenge--revenge more than the snake--now, sir," Mr. Scarlett groaned.

There are times in plenty in most men's lives when, either through anger or stubbornness, danger does not influence them. This was a case in point. I had suffered so much from Jassim and his wretched snake that his threats simply stiffened my back to such an extent that I much preferred to be killed than give in. The mail steamer was leaving next day so to make certain that Jassim should not get it, I went aboard the _Intrepid_, told Popple Opstein what had happened, and after one last look at the bracelet we packed it up and sent it home to my bankers in London. At any rate, whatever happened to me (and I did not really believe that anything would happen) Jassim should never have it, and later on we might be able to negotiate for the reward of thirty thousand rupees with the rightful owner, the Khan of Khamia himself.

I breathed more freely when the mail steamer left the harbour, and not until it had gone did I tell Mr. Scarlett what I had done.

He and I stood watching till she disappeared behind the rocks at the entrance, and, drawing a deep breath of relief, he said:

"It seems wonderful, sir; don't it, sir? Here for thirteen years it's been part and parcel of me, and now I'm finished with it. I never want to set eyes on the beastly thing again."

From that moment Mr. Scarlett began very rapidly to mend. He grew stouter, his eyes lost their hunted look, and though he worried much about the risks I was running, still it is a different thing to worry about other people's risks from worrying about one's own, and he rapidly recovered his spirits.

I made light of any danger and took no precaution whatever, until one night, shortly afterwards, I was awakened by the noise of a scuffle and a splash in the water alongside.

"What's that?" I sang out, springing up.

Webster answered out of the darkness: "It's all right, sir. It's that Arab chap you hove overboard the other day. He was trying to creep on board over the stern. I spotted him, sir, and popped him back into the 'ditch'."

Another day I was bathing with the _Intrepids_, and we were skylarking afterwards on the beach, when a bullet hit the sand close to me and we heard the report of a revolver. Spotting someone moving behind a rock we all darted in that direction, but when we reached it saw no one.

I don't mind saying that those two things happening made me extremely nervous, and made me stick pretty close to the "_B.A._".

I could now realize what mental agony Mr. Scarlett had suffered, and though perhaps I did not show it as much I felt it most acutely. The boot was on the other foot now with a vengeance, and it was I who, when it grew dark, looked longingly at the little hot oven of a cabin and felt a great temptation to lock myself in until daylight.

A few days after the revolver-shot incident Mr. Scarlett astonished me by asking leave to go ashore for a walk in Muscat itself. Remember that he had not dared to land since he and I had had that first walk there and had run across Jassim. Away he went, taking Jaffa and Webster with him, and they did not return on board until long after I had finished dinner.

Mr. Scarlett was chuckling--I had never seen him so pleased with himself--Jaffa had a contented smile on his face, and Webster so far forgot himself as to wink at me.

"Hallo, what have you been doing?" I asked.

"He's all right, sir," the gunner said, rubbing his hands. "Mr. Jassim won't be worrying you again for some time."

"What has happened?" I asked eagerly. "Have you killed him?"

"Well, sir, not exactly, but we just happened to meet him--after we'd been hunting round for him all the afternoon--and we just happened to have a bit of a row, and there just happened to be a couple of the Sultan's soldiers handy. I made a bobbery, Jaffa and I calling out that he had stolen money from us, and off they took him up there," and Mr. Scarlett jerked his thumb towards the big fort on the right, whose towers and battlemented walls showed out in the moonlight over our heads. "There he'll stay, sir, as long as we like to pay for his keep. It cost us five chips to the soldiers and another twenty to the sheikh in charge of the fort. It was well worth it. Don't you think so, sir? So long as we pay the governor of that fort or jail, call it what you like, five rupees a day he'll keep him there and feed him," Mr. Scarlett said, emphasizing the "feed him" as if that made his action quite meritorious.

Well, it was a very "low-down" game to play, and if I had known they were going to play it I should have put a "stopper" on it; but now the man was under lock and key it was so much a relief that I had not the honest courage to blame the gunner or take steps to have Jassim set free.

After that Mr. Scarlett visited the jail nearly every day, to assure himself that Jassim was still there; nor was he content until he had peered through a grating overlooking the court-yard in which untried prisoners were kept, and seen him. He seemed to take a fiendish delight in those visits, and I must say that I fully shared his satisfaction, for, to me, the resulting comfort and relief from anxiety was cheap at the price--only five rupees a day. It may have been a cowardly, despicable thing to do, but I don't believe that anyone placed in the same circumstances would have done otherwise.

We had now been very nearly a month at Muscat, and the artificers from the _Intrepid_ had not quite finished my engine-room defects, when one morning, four or five days after Jassim had been secured, an urgent signal came from Commander Duckworth that he wanted to see me at once. I had a presentiment that something had gone wrong at Jask.

I was right. As I went into his cabin the Commander sang out: "You'll have to go across to Jask after all, and as soon as ever you are ready. There's more trouble there. One of the European telegraph people has been killed somewhere along the coast by a marauding lot of brigands who have cut the wire again. Fisher dare not send his people to repair it without an escort, so you had better go across and see what you can do. When can you start?"

"By midnight, sir," I told him, having taken the precaution of finding out before I left the "_B.A._".

"Right you are! Off you go! I don't fancy that there is anything serious. If there is you can telegraph for me and I will bring the _Intrepid_ along. Good-bye! Good luck!"

What a grand chap he was! I left his cabin feeling that he had not hampered me with any restrictions whatsoever, and had placed entire confidence in my judgment. If only senior officers would always treat their juniors in that way they would not so often have to grumble at the way they are served--and, what is more important still--they would make more efficient officers of them.

I met Popple Opstein outside. For once he had shipped a long face.

"Did the skipper tell you who has been killed?" he asked. "I'm afraid it's our poor little friend's brother. What rotten hard luck on her if it's true!"

In my excitement at getting this job I had never thought. Of course it must be Borsen; he was the only other European there. Poor fellow! Poor little sad-eyed slip of a girl, she would be weeping her heart out.

I had a burning feeling inside me, and I wished that I could have started off then and there to blow a dozen or more of those cowardly treacherous Baluchis to atoms.

"I wish I could come along with you," my chum said wistfully. "I'd love to have a 'go' at them!"

He tried to get leave, but without success, so back I went to the "_B.A._", angry, and impatient to get away.

"Good-bye, old chap! Tell her how very sorry I am," he called after me.

"Right you are!" I shouted back, but had an uneasy thought that perhaps she was still too angry to allow me to speak to her.

I told Mr. Scarlett the news, rather expecting him to show the old half-frightened expression, and was quite taken aback when he smiled and said: "A chance of our seeing a bit more scrapping--eh, sir?" He said it as if he, too, rather looked forward to such a thing happening, and I had to look again at his face to make sure. Well, his disposition seemed to be changing, and as there was nothing else to account for the change except the parting with the snake I put it down to that.

It was splendid the way those artificers and lascars worked to finish their job. They knew why they had to hurry, and they toiled and sweated in the heat of the engine-room like demons.

By half-past ten that night we were ready. I sent the _Intrepid's_ artificers back to their ship with something inside them to warm their stomachs, flashed across the "Permission to part company", and steamed out of the harbour.

"He won't be there very long now," Mr. Scarlett grunted, jerking his thumb towards the fort, whose towers and walls showed up above us in the moonlight.

I really had forgotten Jassim, and did not care how soon he bribed the jailers and got free. I despised myself for having allowed him to be kept there.

Off we went to Jask---easily at first, to give the engines a chance of settling down; later on as fast as they would whizz round.

We were all so impatient to get there that however fast they went the "_B.A._" seemed to crawl along.

At ten o'clock next morning we met the fortnightly mail-steamer coming from Jask, on her way to Muscat and Hartley semaphored across to ask if all was well there.

Someone on board took in the signal and answered "Yes," to our great relief, and then I asked if the two ladies from Jask were on board.

"No," was semaphored back, and I was half-glad and half-sorry--glad to know that I should see them, sorry that another fortnight must elapse before another steamer would give them a chance of escaping.

By noon the little white telegraph buildings showed up over the horizon, and two hours later I steamed close in under the rocks on which they stood, and anchored. No white handkerchief fluttered from the signal-mast. Poor little lady, if it was her brother who had been killed she must be somewhere inside those white walls in a terrible state of grief.

I landed immediately.

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