CHAPTER VIII

*

*Ugly Rumours*

At daybreak next morning we were off Jask Point, with its square white telegraph buildings and its low sand-hills jutting out into the sea. As the shamel was still blowing hard from the north-west I anchored to the east'ard of the point, close to some rocks, and among a number of dhows sheltering there.

Percy pipeclayed my shoes and helmet, laid out my last clean white suit of uniform, and, having made myself look as smart as I could, I landed close to the old ruined fort (or sheikh's house) and walked up towards the telegraph buildings, meeting the political agent, in pyjamas, smoking a cigar and looking critically at the earth breastwork and the line of wire entanglements.

"Hallo!" he called out cheerily; "they told me you were coming in. You people have made it hot for everybody along the coast, and no mistake!"

He did not want me to give him any news. He had already heard of the capture of one dhow and the destruction of the other, of the terrible losses of the Afghans, of our men being killed, and that Bungi and Sudab had been destroyed. The Afghans had got the idea into their heads that the poor, wretched Persian villagers had given the "show" away, so had taken this ghastly revenge.

"You can't keep anything secret in this country," he said; "the way news travels is simply marvellous. I even heard that an officer had been wounded.

"Was that you?" he asked, looking at my forehead. "I heard that one of you had been seen to fall whilst running along the beach."

I shook my head. "I did not land. It was my chum. Shot through the calf he was. He's all right now."

"Those Afghans came along this way before they went home," he continued; "camped round the new fort, halfway to old Jask; hanged a couple of Persian customs people who lived in it; hanged them from the top of the wall to show their contempt for the Persian Governor; looted it and went away next morning with their camels and the women and children captured in those villages. They had a great number of wounded, those you had wounded--poor wretches!--and threatened to come along and cut our throats later on. A few of them did actually ride up here and fire their rifles--but that was nothing. They put down their losses--they had more than sixty killed--and their ill luck with the gun-running business to the telegraph cable--about right they are too--and would do anything to destroy it and us. Before they went away they cut the land line running along the coast to Karachi, just to give us the trouble of repairing it."

"Aren't you rather nervous?" I asked him.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"We have twenty fellows here who can handle rifles--Eurasians and people like that--besides Borsen and myself. The governor of Jask, too, has fifty or sixty border police, Bedouins, whom the Afghans hate more than they hate us, so we could rely upon them at a pinch!"

"I suppose they will not attempt to run more rifles into Bungi or Sudab?" I said enquiringly.

"No, no! they've had enough of those two places. They'll get news across to the Arabian coast and lie quiet for some months. Come along and have 'chota-hazri'," he said, changing the subject. "You needn't say anything about those Afghans or about them coming along here. My wife knows nothing about it, nor does Miss Borsen; I don't want them to know."

He took me up to his house and sent off the telegrams for the Admiral. The old head boy brought us tea, bread and butter, and fruit, and I quite enjoyed myself, except that the old gentleman was wearing a yellow-silk turban, and every time he came out on the veranda it caught my eye, and I thought he was Miss Borsen.

However, I might have spared myself the trouble of constantly turning my head and expecting to see her, because she was not even living in that house, but with her brother.

Afterwards, on my way down to the beach, I saw her there, a slim little figure on the shore, dressed all in white, with a big white helmet almost covering her yellow hair, looking strangely out of place among a motley crowd of Arabs, Persians, and Zanzibaris, loading and unloading the dhows.

"Her brother ought not to let her come down alone," I thought angrily.

She had a camera with her, and was taking pictures of the natives and their camels. She smiled when she saw me, and every mortal thing I had in my head seemed to go out of it. I couldn't think of any blessed thing to say except that it was a fine morning.

Then she laughed until I grew red and uncomfortable. It was a relief to shout across to the "_B.A._" for the dinghy, but whilst it was coming she made me pose for my photograph.

"I have a snapshot of your little steamboat (boat!--mind you); I must have one of its captain too," she said, as if it was a great compliment to be photographed by her.

If there is one thing I hate more than another it is having my photograph taken. Especially did I hate this, because she arranged me and rearranged me, with Griffiths in the dinghy for a background, and all the time he was grinning at me till I felt the idiot I looked. She never mentioned the scar on my forehead, so I took my helmet off so that she must see it, and then all she said was: "Do put your hat on again, and turn side face; that nasty scratch quite spoils the picture."

Hat! Nasty scratch! Spoils her picture! My word, what irritating things girls are! I'd gone ashore wanting her to see the wound, perhaps to say something nice about it, and hoping that she would treat me, for once, as though I were a man; and she'd made me cover it up in order not to spoil her picture, and made me stand there, like a baby, whilst she took the snapshot.

I felt very irritated, and when she said: "Let me come aboard and photograph that dear Mr. Scarlett," I felt more annoyed than ever. At that time of the morning the _Bunder Abbas_ wasn't clean and tidy, so I answered rather cuttingly that I'd send the gunner ashore to be photographed, and suggested that perhaps she'd better wait until her brother or the political agent's wife could bring her on board some other time.

She smiled again her mocking smile, and, curtsying derisively, watched me clambering clumsily into the dinghy, trying not to wet my feet. With her eyes on me I felt like an elephant trying to get into a canoe, and one of my feet slipped and went into the water. That buckskin shoe was pretty well spoiled.

When Griffiths shoved off--still grinning the brute was--I looked back to salute; but she was already walking away from the beach and did not turn her head.

"She's offended now," I thought. "Serve her jolly well right! Fancy asking herself aboard like that; no English girl would have dreamt of doing such a thing!"

However, I was not really in the least pleased, and Mr. Scarlett soon found out that I was in a pretty bad temper.

Commander Duckworth had ordered me to lie at Jask until replies to his telegrams had been received from the Admiral, so there I had to stay--possibly for days.

The morning went by very slowly. I was in a thoroughly bad temper, and didn't care a "buttered biscuit" whether the six-pounder's recoil springs wanted adjusting or not; and when the lascar first-driver reported that the packing in the high-pressure piston-rod gland was not as tight as it should be, dragging me down below to see it, I cursed him till he salaamed a hundred times a minute to appease me. Moore, too, reported Ellis again for giving him "lip", and went away "with a flea in his ear".

I could not get the idea out of my head that those Afghans would come back and attack the place. Those wire entanglements and earthworks looked such puny things to keep back those fierce chaps who had faced our Maxims and six-pounder near Bungi, that if they really meant business, fifty rifles would not keep them out.

It was such hard luck on those two women. The political agent and Borsen did not count. They'd gone into the job with their eyes open, but the women--well, that was different. They should never have been allowed to come to this desolate, exposed, out-of-the-way spot, on the very edge of civilization.

Those mountains, too, were only twenty miles away; the Afghans could swoop down from them in a night, appear as unexpectedly as a vulture, get between the telegraph station and old Jask, with its fifty Bedouin border police, and cut it off entirely.

I sent for Jaffa and asked him what kind of fellows these border police were. He shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that they were useless, and volunteered to go to Jask and find out, in the bazaars, what news there was. I let him go, and he borrowed a camel from a friend on the beach and rode away inland, his black lambskin fez disappearing among the palms surrounding the ruined sheikh's house.

That afternoon Mr. Scarlett and I enjoyed the luxury of a thoroughly good sleep, lying back in our canvas chairs under the awning outside our cabin until Percy woke us for afternoon tea--tinned milk, bread (stale) buttered with liquid tinned butter, rancid at that.

There was a little sandy cove among the rocks close alongside, so I sent the whole crew ashore there, natives and all. They were soon enjoying themselves to their hearts' content, bathing and skylarking, scrubbing their clothes, drying them on the hot sand, and having a thoroughly good time.

"I'm hanged if I'm going to land at Jask again," I said to myself; but I did go, bawling ashore for someone to bring off the dinghy, and wearing my one respectable flannel suit of "plain clothes"--the very first time I had worn "plain clothes" since joining the _Bunder Abbas_.

I left Mr. Scarlett in charge; he never wanted to go ashore. He said, quite openly, that he was afraid of meeting Jassim, and felt sure that he would do so sooner or later. He was not a man one could argue with. Once he had made up his mind that something gloomy was going to happen he'd stick to it, and when it didn't happen he would be more certain that something worse still would take its place. This silly business about Jassim and the bracelet was, of course, at the bottom of it all. It seemed so absolutely childish for him to imagine that he would meet the man, or that anyone would remember the beastly thing, after all these years, to say nothing of the fact that whatever poison was left in the fangs after they had bitten those two could not possibly have retained its powers, that I lost patience with him.

I landed, but never intended going near the telegraph station, not by a long chalk. I did not want to be treated like a child by Miss Borsen--you bet I did not--so I wandered off to explore the ruins of that sheikh's house or fort among the palm trees.

It was a great square building with a tower at one corner, built up of red sandy bricks, all rounded by age, and the mortar, or whatever it was which bound them together, so friable and crumbling that I could loosen a brick with the end of a stick in no time. An entrance under the tower (from which the door had long since disappeared) led into a courtyard covered with rubbish, and all round it were the remains of dwelling-rooms, storehouses, and stables. Some still had roofs to them. A great high wall with crumbling battlements and platforms seemed to shut out every trace of breeze and shut in every ray of heat. The place was like an enormous oven. I climbed up some rough brick steps leading towards the battlements and base of the tower and had a good view over the surrounding country.

Beyond a few miserable palm trees was the open narrow piece of flat ground forming the neck of the peninsula. It gradually rose towards the telegraph buildings, and about halfway between--something like three hundred yards from where I stood---were the line of wire entanglements and the earth breastwork, stretching right across from the rocks under which the _Bunder Abbas_ was anchored to the shore on the other side, where the shamel was still driving white breakers up the beach with a continuous roar.

Still higher was that strong, loopholed wall surrounding the buildings themselves.

Away to the east'ard ran the telegraph line on its bare steel poles: the line which ran along the coast to Karachi, and which the Afghans had cut only a few days ago. I could follow the line of telegraph posts till they dwindled into "nothing", and felt very thankful that it was not my job to go along that appallingly lonely coast to repair damages.

I suppose I was seen from the telegraph station, for a servant came running down the peninsula, came into the middle of the courtyard, and I'm hanged if I didn't get an invitation to tea with the political agent's wife.

I climbed down and followed him, pretending that I was unwilling to go, and grumbling to myself that if I did meet Miss Borsen we should probably have a row. In half an hour I found myself playing tennis with a borrowed racket and borrowed shoes, which flopped about like canoes on my feet, with Miss Borsen playing opposite me, and beating me time after time with her low drives along the side lines. She seemed to take a positive joy in seeing me falling over my own feet in my attempts to return balls much too good for me. I hate being beaten at any game, especially by a woman, so that did not improve my temper.

"What about your gunner?" the political agent said, when at last I was allowed to "cool off" out of range of that little torturer's eyes. "Doesn't he ever come ashore?"

This made me think of Jassim, the bracelet, and of snake poisons.

"Do you know anything about poisons?" I asked. "How long do you suppose a cobra's poison would remain deadly?"

"In a dead cobra, do you mean? I don't know; but I should not care to keep a dried one without having his poison gland removed."

"No," I said. "If you extracted the poison and kept it in a--a bottle, for instance."

"Not for long, I should imagine," he answered; and then I was fairly startled, for he began to tell me the story of the very cobra bracelet on Mr. Scarlett's arm. I did my best to appear as if this was all quite unknown to me, for fear he should guess that I knew something about it, and drag more information from me than Mr. Scarlett would care I should tell.

"I've never seen it," he went on, quite unsuspiciously; "but an old friend of mine, skipper of a tramp steamer doing a queer business in the Gulf many years ago, saw it once, and told me that he'd never seen such a beautiful piece of workmanship. It will turn up some day at Christie's or at some other curio dealer's in London, I expect, and I'm rather sorry for whoever buys it. If he is known to possess it the news will come along out here, and I don't mind saying that it will disappear again within six months. The present Khan of Khamia, the real owner, is not the wealthy chap some of the former khans were, but he offers a reward every three months in the bazaars of every town on both sides of the Gulf--a reward of thirty thousand rupees--to whoever brings back the 'twin death', as it is called. That's two thousand pounds, and there's not an Arab born yet who wouldn't give his body to earn that, to say nothing about his being certain of Paradise if he helped to restore it to its rightful owners."

I mopped my perspiring face often enough to prevent him noticing how his confirmation of Mr. Scarlett's yarn had stirred me, and was quite glad to be called away to play tennis.

I played worse than ever, and Miss Borsen grew more provokingly successful.

After all my determination never to go near her again, I found myself weakly consenting to stay to dinner. The political agent rigged me out in clothes of his own, and the meal was a most delightful change after "pigging it" on board the "_B.A._" for six weeks on tinned grub, with only the gunner's black-bearded, morose face in front of me. After such fare as we had had this dinner was luxury, but still more of a luxury than the food was the daintily decorated table with its soft candlelight.

It would have been absolutely enjoyable if Miss Borsen had not been there too. She had a most irritating effect on me. Whether she intended it or not she always seemed to be "pulling my leg", and I instinctively "bristled up" and wanted to get the upper hand, and put her in her proper place as a very dainty little lady who should listen, very respectfully, whilst I talked.

I tried to tell them about being carried away to sea in that dhow; but when I came to the part where I climbed along the struggling yard, instead of looking impressed, she merely giggled: "I wish I'd been there; you must have looked like a frog." This put me "off" telling any more yarns, and made me so annoyed with her that I disagreed with everything she said.

Every time I did so she came off best in the argument, in spite of not speaking English very fluently.

By the end of that dinner I felt that I wanted to pick her up--I could have done so with one hand--and give her a thoroughly good shaking, just to make her realize how strong I was, and that though she could defeat me with her clever little tongue, she was, at any rate, helpless physically.

It was a most gloriously cool night, with millions of stars shining, and they all walked down to the beach to see me go aboard. We came to a dark patch close to the beach, where the tide sometimes washed across, and when the political agent called out: "Be careful of your feet; it's swampy," the temptation was too great. I whisked little Miss Borsen off her feet, and, before she had time to make more than an angry protest, had carried her twenty paces across it and set her down on the dry sand.

She never spoke a single word after that, and I chuckled to think that, at last, I had stopped her tormenting little tongue. I would try that dodge again if necessary.

I hailed the "_B.A._"; the dinghy came ashore for me, and off to my launch I went, shouting good-night to them all. My little tormentor's voice was not among the chorus of "good-nights" shouted back. She still had her tongue tied.

Mr. Scarlett was waiting up for me, looking more saturnine than ever. His dark eyes gleamed maliciously when I came into the light of the lamp, because a little blue-velvet bow had caught in a button of my coat. It was one she had worn, and I got red, looked an ass, and untwisted it. I kept it, too, as a trophy of the first victory I had won.

"Brute force is better than brains--sometimes," I chuckled to myself.

"Jaffa come back?" I asked.

Mr. Scarlett shook his head, and I felt rather nervous about him, although that was quite unnecessary, because he arrived next morning, safe and sound, but with very little definite information. The townspeople in Old Jask were in a state of alarm at the threats of the hill tribes, and the Khan or Mir had called in the border police from outlying villages. He had actually served out ammunition to them--a thing he did not often do for fear that they themselves would plunder Jask. I went up to see the political agent to tell him of this. He knew it already, but it was a good enough excuse to go, for I wanted to know if I had offended Miss Borsen and apologize if I had done so.

However, I did not see her; and although the replies to those telegrams did not come from the Admiral for another four days, and I went there every day, I never did see her. There was always some excuse: that she had a headache, or was resting; but it was plain enough that I had mortally offended her, and my victory seemed much more like a defeat.

So it was quite a relief when the cipher telegrams did arrive, and when the "_B.A._" steamed away north-west again, to look for the _Intrepid_.

These telegrams ordered Commander Duckworth to proceed immediately to Muscat. He wasted no time in picking up the two cutters and departing, leaving me to cruise up and down that same strip of coast for another fortnight, without seeing a sail--until, in fact, I had to run across to Muscat myself, for coal and water.

I found the _Intrepid_ there anchored under the black cliffs and the old fort, and hoped to get ashore, but was ordered to fill up as quickly as possible and to cruise off a place called Jeb, about forty miles to the north'ard, where those rifles were originally reported to have been stowed. A miserable native chap, with a grudge to repay, had come along from there to say that a dhow was filling up with rifles for the Makran coast. So off I had to go.

This coast was entirely different from the one I had just left. Stupendous barren mountains towered up to the sky; their ridges and shoulders, sweeping down to the sea, ended abruptly in stupendous cliffs whose feet were eaten away by the continual beating of the south-west monsoon waves, until they looked as if they must soon topple over. Forbidding-looking inlets here and there made very comfortable shelter to lie in for a few hours, though I could not stay in them for long without being "sniped". My orders were not to go within five hundred yards of any inhabited place, because the people along the coast were so well armed, and even in these desolate inlets they would discover me, after a very short time, and compel me to go out into the heavy seas again.

Thank goodness, they were execrable shots!

Luck was not in our way, for when we returned to Muscat we found that the _Intrepid_ herself had captured that dhow, and all we had to do was to tow it out and burn it--not a very heroic task.

The next fortnight was spent still farther to the north'ard. Sixty miles of coast we had to examine, and we started from the farthest point, gradually working along towards Muscat. Wherever there was a gap in the cliffs, or a valley running down to the sea, in we would go and be sure to find a village, perhaps a dozen huts, perhaps fifty, nestling under a few date-palm trees or along the banks of a stream. The natives (fishermen, for the most part, owning perhaps a few sheep or goats, which they guarded day and night from wolves and jackals) were an inoffensive, absolutely ignorant lot of people. Even Jaffa could make very little out of them except that they lived in perpetual fear of Bedouins or other raiding Arab tribes and of wild animals. They did not want money--they did not seem to know the use of it--and for a few dates and a few pounds of rice--especially rice--we could get enough fish for the whole crew.

I had to search all these villages for concealed arms. It was supposed that the Arabs--Bedouins or whoever they were--knowing that it was useless to try to send any more rifles away from Jeb, would take them farther up the coast in caravans, distributing them in small numbers among these villages and compelling the natives to store them in their huts, until dhows should come along and take them away.

However, we found nothing whatever except a few old muzzle-loaders, dating from the year "one".

There was such an entire absence of danger that whilst a couple of bluejackets or marines, under Moore, Ellis, or Webster, went from hut to hut, searching, I would take the head man of the village away up the slopes of the mountains and try to get a shot at a wild goat. I managed to bag one or two, and when, one day, at some wretched place which I don't believe possessed a name, I shot a leopard (I had only a shotgun with me), breaking its hindlegs so that it could not get away and the natives could surround it and beat it to death, I was looked upon as the saviour of the village. They filled the dinghy with fish, and actually brought along a sheep. Jaffa and Mr. Scarlett said it was a sheep; I thought it was a goat; and I'm hanged if it was possible to tell, by eating it, which it was.

The news of my shooting the leopard spread along the coast, and whereas, previously, the villagers had been half-frightened out of their lives when the "_B.A._" appeared, flying hurriedly with their women and children, goats and sheep, to the mountains, now, when we anchored off a village, the beach would often be lined with people to welcome us and implore me to go and shoot leopards or jackals.

On the last day of this cruise, the last morning before we had to return to Muscat for more coal and food, I took the _Bunder Abbas_ into a most marvellous gorge in the cliffs. Just imagine enormous, perpendicular, sea-worn cliffs, eight hundred feet high, with the south-west monsoon swell roaring at their feet, and a cleft, not fifty yards across, cut straight down through them, as by some enormous knife.

Into this the "_B.A._" shoved her nose, twisted and turned, with those huge walls on either side, until long after the sea had disappeared and the booming of the breaking swell had ceased. Gradually the walls trended downwards, until a last turn disclosed an inland basin, quite a mile long and nearly as broad. Mangrove trees came down all round it nearly to the water's edge; what looked like rich grass-land ran up the slopes of the mountains until it faded among the gaunt bare rock; and at one place, where a little stream opened, there was quite a large cluster of huts, with many fishing-boats drawn up on the beach in front of them. I anchored in front of this village--marked on the chart as Kalat al Abeid--lowered the dinghy, and pulled ashore, with Jaffa to interpret, and the three marines (armed with rifles) to do the usual searching.

I took my shot-gun, but the head-man--a tall, wizened, old chap with a scarlet sash round his waist and a scarlet turban on his head--as soon as he saw it, shook his head, patted one of the marine's rifles, and jabbered away excitedly to Jaffa, pointing up to the mountains.

Jaffa interpreted: "He say plenty leopard in mountain--come down every night--kill sheep and goats--two nights ago killed a woman. Want you get rifle from ship--go shoot them--want all men go--kill many leopard--he show you where they sleep in daytime."

"Right oh, old cock!" I said, sent the dinghy back for another rifle, and hurried away the marines and Jaffa to get their searching done.

The villagers were so eager for us to go shooting that they had actually stripped their huts of everything movable, bringing the things outside, so that all we had to do was to stoop down through the low doorway, see that the floor was bare and had not been disturbed lately (no rifles buried there), then back out again and search the next.

It was the quaintest sight in the world to see the excited children--little brown naked urchins--staggering out with big clay cooking utensils and brass cooking pots as big as themselves, as happy as the day was long at this new kind of game.

One or two huts were so dark inside that we could not see; but the natives tore away some of the palm-leaf roof to let in light, in order that nothing should delay us.

Griffiths came back with the dinghy and my rifle, bringing a spare one on the chance that I would let him have a day's sport too. I let him come, and away inland we started, the head-man, Jaffa (with my shot-gun), and myself leading, followed by Webster, his two marines, and Griffiths, surrounded by a dirty, happy mob of natives, armed with short, clumsy hunting spears, some only with boat's paddles. Innumerable children followed, shrieking with delight, and a dozen or more women, hooded so that we could only see their eyes, bearing vessels of water--big earthenware chatties--on their heads, brought up the rear of the expedition.

If I had had any idea whatever of treachery the fact of the women coming along would have dispelled that. We were just as safe as if we had been going shooting among a lot of country people in England.

Directly we had reached the limits of cultivation the children were sent back very quickly. No leopard could have slept comfortably within a mile of the noise they made. Then we commenced to wind up a track towards the mountains themselves, and the nearer we came to them the more rugged and barren they looked. Very nearly black they were in places; great rents split whole shoulders from the main ridge; huge masses of rock were poised on each other like vast columns, looking as though a bird perching on them would upset them. Indeed the slope we were ascending was so strewn with gigantic blocks of black rock that one knew that they, at one time, must have fallen from just such columns.

The head-man began talking volubly to Jaffa, and he, turning to me, said: "Leopards there--come down at night--go back sleep close by."

I told Jaffa that whatever happened I must be back by sunset.

The old man understood and nodded--so we pushed on. It was very hot work scrambling up that vast, debris-strewn slope, over smooth rocks which gave scarcely any foothold, twisting round great boulders or half-wading through loose sand, worn from the face of some steep, precipitous part by countless years of exposure--everything too hot to put one's hands on comfortably, and the sun always scorching on one's back. I called a halt long before the old head-man had begun to show the slightest sign of fatigue.

I looked back. My three marines and Griffiths were some way below us, among the admiring villagers, wiping their perspiring faces. Lower down was the little group of women crouching together, with their water chatties in front of them; a thousand feet below, beyond the dark, green fringe of mangrove trees, the _Bunder Abbas_ lay in that inland basin, and, winding out like a dark snake, the channel wriggled through the cliffs to the sea. The blazing sun poured down relentlessly from a cloudless sky.

Jaffa touched my arm, pointing out to sea and to a faintly-showing trail of smoke. Unslinging my glasses, I followed the line of smoke till I saw a steamer. It was the _Intrepid_, evidently making for this same harbour.

"Why the dickens is she coming here?" I thought, and would have stayed; but the head-man was impatient, so we shoved on again, though I kept turning back to watch her until she disappeared under the shore-line. In half an hour Jaffa, whose one eye seemed better than my two, swung me round to see her emerge from the channel into the basin itself.

Well, the old "_B.A._" was safe enough now. It did not matter how late we got back; when he heard about the leopards Commander Duckworth would be too good a sportsman to be annoyed that I was not there. I felt quite at ease.

So on we scrambled, in Indian file, higher and higher, until a turn of the track round a shoulder of the rocks shut out the sight of the sea, and also, thank goodness, gave us shelter from the sun. It was like going from brilliant sunlight into a darkened room.

We now found ourselves in an extraordinary hollow, more like being at the bottom of a huge well or cup--a coffee-cup with a crack in it, the crack the ravine through which we had just entered--its bottom strewn with a jumble of rocks which had fallen in the course of ages from the precipitous walls which shut out the sky. It was very gloomy and silent but delightfully cool.

Craning our necks backwards we looked up through the rim of our coffee-cup to the burning sky overhead. That rim must have been a thousand or twelve hundred feet above our heads if it was an inch, and at one point, immediately opposite us, there was an extraordinary gap in it. Just as the cleft in the cliffs through which the _Bunder Abbas_ had steamed three hours before looked as though some giant had chipped it out with an enormous axe, so this gap looked as though the same giant, on his way to the sea, had pinched a piece out of the edge as he swung himself across it.

Strangely enough, Jaffa discovered afterwards that there was a local tradition something to that effect.

The villagers began to crowd round us, jabbering excitedly. The old head-man drove them away, whacking them with his long stick. Then he began talking to Jaffa.

"Villagers stay here," Jaffa explained. "Head-man take you and us up to gap--leopards lie among rocks all about here--when we climb up to top villagers make noise--leopards try escape through gap--you shoot."

What a grand idea! I would have gone anywhere with the sporting old chap, although I had not the faintest idea how we were to get up there without wings.

"Right oh! Lead on!" I cried, and the old fellow began leading us farther into the gloomy bottom of the "cup", clambering round the boulders, Jaffa, myself, the three marines, and Griffiths following him. Then he began to ascend the precipitous wall itself by a path--if you could call it a path--so steep and so narrow in places that it was as much as I could do to keep my feet or climb up it. It zigzagged up that wall in twenty or more zigzags; looking down from the upper ones we could see those below; looking upwards we could see no trace of any foothold, nothing whatever but rocks rising sheer above us. At one or two of the worst places the edge of the track actually overhung, and small stones dislodged by my feet fell plumb down until I dare not watch them far for fear of feeling dizzy.

Presently we had scaled the rocks sufficiently high to come to the edge of the shadow cast by the eastern rim of the "cup". Here I called a halt, perhaps three hundred feet below the gap, and we leant back against the rocks and rested. I felt like a fly on a wall, and only wished that I had suckers on my hands and feet, or were a goat.

"This isn't a proper track, is it?" I asked Jaffa.

He smiled, and at the time I didn't believe him when he said: "The only way out of the valley--only way inland from the village--for men or camels!"

"Camels! What nonsense!" I thought.

The old head-man was much too energetic for me. Off he went again, and led us into the full blaze of the sun.

Great snakes! In a minute or two I was dripping with perspiration, and when we did at last reach that gap, and I threw myself down on some rocks there, I don't think that I had ever felt so hot in my life.

However, a grand current of air whistled through the gap, as though this, too, was the only way the sea-breezes could pour inland. I soon cooled down.

"What a climb!" I said to Webster, as we looked down at the extraordinary chasm beneath our feet--the "coffee-cup", as I have called it--and tried to trace the zigzag path up which we had climbed. It must have taken us an hour at least to ascend, and I confess that, as I looked down, I did not in the least relish the idea of having to crawl down again.

At the bottom it was dark and gloomy and silent; not a trace of villagers could we see among the rocks there, nor could we get a view of the _Intrepid_ or the sea beyond, because the crack in the "coffee-cup" was shut in by another shoulder of the mountains.

The gap was about five yards wide, its sides about twenty feet high, and I took twelve paces before I looked down into the valleys on the far side. Deep and misty they were, and beyond them stupendous ranges of barren, naked mountains lost themselves in the distance.

The old man made us take up positions on the crest on either side of the gap, myself, himself, Jaffa, and Griffiths on one side, the three marines on the other; and was just going to give the signal to the men below to commence their drive--a leopard drive, mind you; think of it, and think how happy and excited we were--when, turning to look down the far side, his face became a muddy-yellow colour--just as Mr. Scarlett's often did. All the life seemed to die out of it, and he gasped out: "Bedouin!"

We all turned, and through my glasses I saw what at first looked like some huge snake winding up the valley towards us. Then I saw that it was an apparently endless caravan of heavily-laden camels, wearily trailing one after the other. Among them were many horsemen--a hundred or more, although it was impossible to count them.

Then I knew why the _Intrepid_ had turned up so unexpectedly. These were the very fellows we had been hunting for, bringing their rifles from Jeb to hide them in the village at our feet, until dhows could be sent to take them away. And they must pass through this gap, on either side of which we were lying, in order to get there. Some wretched brute must have taken the news to Muscat, and given away the scheme (there were always plenty of these fellows mean enough to sell their own fathers for a few rupees).

The old head-man, half-paralysed with fear, was worming himself down into the gap. I clutched him.

"Ask him how long before they reach here!" I told Jaffa.

The old chap could hardly speak, he was so frightened.

"In two hours!" Jaffa told me.

My brain was hot with the fluster of wondering what I ought to do.

Webster, the corporal of marines, came scrambling down across the gap and up to me, his eyes gleaming. He was bursting to suggest something.

"Out with it!" I said.

"Beg pardon, sir, but the five of us could hold this here gap against a whole regiment, and we'd drive these chaps off like winking. They can't outflank us, they must come along in single file. It would be grand if we could stop 'em."

I could see that for myself; but at the first shot back would go the whole caravan, and if those camels were laden with rifles and ammunition not one should we capture. A better plan rushed through my head--to let them get through and then prevent them getting back!

I would send the head-man to tell Commander Duckworth. He would come along with every man he could land, and do the whole business whilst we stopped their retreat. It would be the grandest haul that had ever been made. Instead of the villagers driving leopards up to us, the _Intrepid_ should drive these Bedouins and their camels; instead of getting a few mangled leopard skins, we would bag the whole caravan and its rifles.

I told Webster. He grinned with delight.

"How many rounds of ammunition have we?" I asked.

We had nearly six hundred between us; that was enough.

Hurriedly I explained to Jaffa what we intended doing. I tore a leaf from his note-book, and with his pencil wrote a message to Commander Duckworth.

"Give it to the old man! Tell him to take it to the _Intrepid_ as quickly as he can; tell him to take his villagers and the women back with him."

Jaffa's eyes sparkled as he passed the orders to the trembling head-man and gave him the note.

I let go of his cloak, and he slid down the rocks like an eel, and was off down the dizzy zigzag path, like a goat, to where his people lay hid.

Then Webster, with a grin on his face, went back to his side of the gap with orders to conceal himself and his two men farther along the edge, not to expose themselves on the sky-line for a single moment, and on no account to fire until I fired.

I knew that I could trust Webster.

Jaffa drew out his beloved Mauser pistol to see that it was loaded, and we had nothing to do but wait whilst those weary camels and their escort wound their way up towards the gap.

*