“ 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. ”

“ An Arab gave a low sob, and I heard a revolver clatter to the deck on my left. A dark arm stretched out to pick it up, where it lay in the moonlight, and as the dark hand seized it and hurriedly drew back into the shadow a bullet splintered the deck where it had been.
A long period of silence followed. Except for an occasional groan from one of the Arabs, and the creaking of the yard above us, no sound came to relieve the extreme tension of my ears.
Seven more they had. How many had Jaffa and Wiggins? That was all I could think about. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He talked about a shamel as if it was an old acquaintance—sometimes in a good, but now in a very bad temper.
I began to feel that the wind was not so strong; waves were certainly not breaking over the dhow so frequently nor with so much force. The lee gunwale was well clear of the sea.
I thought that now it might be possible to capture the remnants of that sail, so, making a rope fast round my waist, and telling Dobson to come with me, I scrambled to the foot of the mast. ”

“ Every other minute some ammunition must have exploded, scattering fragments of wood and broken rifles round her on the sand. It was courting death to go near her; but, even so, some Afghans now and then rushed towards her, seized a rifle, and rushed back again. What plucky fellows they were!
By half-past ten o'clock there was no doubt that not a round of ammunition remained in her, nor a rifle that was not entirely useless; so, with a parting shot dropped behind the sand-hills, I went back to the cutter and dinghy, running the gauntlet of the cliffs without receiving any damage. ”

“ Hardly had they disappeared before back they came into view, very hurriedly, and in a marvellously short space of time the whole of that "coffee-cup" rang with strange cries and shouts as they passed the word up and up its precipitous sides. Along the zigzag path—from one zigzag shouted to the next above—we could hear the news being passed. The camel leaders seized the heads of their camels and stopped them; the Arabs crouching round the gap sprang to their feet as the shouting disturbed them, unslung their rifles, and began talking excitedly. ”

“ One fouled us amidships and tore a stanchion out before she drifted clear; another, having cut her "grass" hawser cable, drifted helplessly right across our bows, with our little cable tautening under her bottom. Every single soul of us was trying to shove her free, and I had to veer cable before she eventually scraped past, hanging up for a moment as her projecting stern caught in the stem-post and carried away another stanchion, which let the whole fore part of the awning fall over the six-pounder gun—and over us too. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The old nakhoda—half-drowned he was—began to recover consciousness, and the Arabs ventured a little farther aft, crouching for shelter under the weather gunwale.
There was now no sign whatever of the Bunder Abbas—we had drifted out of sight of her long ago—but the sky overhead was clearing; large blue patches showed between the clouds, and though the gale still shrieked down on us with unabated violence, our spirits rose considerably.
The edge of civilization! ”

“ Looking through my loophole I saw a tall, fine-looking Arab standing erect at our side of the gap, with a rifle in his hand, turning his head from side to side and then peering below into the chasm beneath.
LOOKING THROUGH MY LOOPHOLE I SAW A TALL, FINE-LOOKING ARAB PEERING INTO THE CHASM BENEATH. I felt certain that the white cigarette end must be lying there at his feet, and that in another second he must see it. My heart seemed to stop beating and my ears buzzed. He turned and looked intently at the very heap of boulders behind which we lay. ”

“ The little dhow, with her white deck and black shadows, was the centre of it, her sail a great patch of white, casting its clear-cut shadow to starboard over the bows and over the water under them, as sharply cut where it fell on the water as across the deck.
In the bows, beyond the foot of the sail, the sleeping Arabs lay in its dark shadow; in the stern, in the shadow of the poop, Dobson and Wiggins were soon fast asleep—the nakhoda had crawled under the poop and slept there. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Our fortnight at Kalat-al-Abeid had now come to a close, so I went ashore to wish my old friend the sheikh good-bye and to give him a few parting words of advice—through Jaffa. I pointed out to him that if a man and two camels could come riding down from the gap without anyone seeing them, five hundred could do so just as easily and just as unexpectedly. However, he only smiled a superior smile and patted his rifle, so I left him complacently oblivious to his danger, and took the Bunder Abbas through the channel in the cliffs out into the open sea once more. ”

“ Just before daybreak Mr. Scarlett woke me. As I jumped to my feet he pointed seawards, and there, sure enough, even in the indistinct light, was a dhow, about four miles off, crawling inshore with a fitful breeze behind her.
"That's no proper trader," Mr. Scarlett whispered hoarsely, his voice shaking a little. "Look what a wretched thing she is! The Arabs never run arms in a new or big dhow: the risk of capture is too great. See that signal?" ”

“ In a few weeks, with luck, I might be three thousand miles away, patrolling the Persian Gulf—free as air—with a good launch under me, and probably a 4.7-inch gun in her bows, ready to tackle any gun-running Arab dhow which came along. Prize money, too—there'd be a chance of that as well.
It was grand.
Collingwood, poor old Collingwood—I'd known him in the Britannia—dead of sunstroke, and the gunner gone mad! That didn't sound as if the job was exactly a bed of roses. But Copeland had put my name down—the die was cast; I didn't mind if the whole crew had died of sunstroke and plague combined. ”

“ Scarlett's voice, calm and collected, came back.
I clutched the railings and gasped as I thought of those two women up there and wondered whether the door through the loopholed wall was closed or not—it was not light enough for me to see. If it was open—God help them!
By this time the leading Baluchis—or whatever they were—were almost up to the line of the barbed-wire; but then I was intensely relieved to hear a few shots popping off from the telegraph buildings, so knew that some of the people had had time to seize their rifles.
"What the devil has gone wrong? Why don't you open fire?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Having seen my own "look-out" man "standing by" with a loaded belt in the Maxim, in case he was needed, I lay down on the deck, outside my cabin, and slept gloriously.
I was awakened by a rifle shot, and jumped up. More rifle shots spluttered out. I looked ashore and saw the cutter's crew lying flat on their chests firing along the strip of beach—showing up in the moonlight as clearly as if it was daytime—and heard Evans shouting out excited orders by the dozen. ”

“ Scarlett looked and shivered.
I saw that the cutter had taken the ground. Her bluejackets, with their rifles in their hands, were jumping into the water and wading ashore, racing ashore, my chum struggling to get ahead of them.
"Go it, Popple Opstein!" I yelled, unable to control myself, and wished that the old "B.A." would go faster, so that I could be alongside him.
My aunt! What luck! Two dhows in less than a fortnight!
"We shall be millionaires in no time," I said, turning to Mr. Scarlett, to cheer him up; but he had gone down on deck again.
Then I had to stop my engines. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mr. Scarlett, his old self once more, was in the bows under the awning, securing the anchor, and I'm almost certain he was whistling a cheerful tune; the crew, both black and white, were skylarking and singing snatches of song whilst they scrubbed and holystoned the decks; Percy's big, shy eyes were dancing with fun as he brought three cups of tea up the ladder to our little deck ”

“ 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. ”

“ I cursed them, but the only effect was to make the old villain smile—a curious smile, which I could not understand.
"Send everyone you can spare to clear away the hatches," I shouted to Mr. Scarlett. "They won't show their papers, and won't do anything."
Three lascars and the Goanese carpenter (yellow with fright) climbed on board with axes, and all my people began hacking at the ropes and hauling away the balks of timber on top of the main-hatch cover.
I yelled myself hoarse to make the Arabs come and lend a hand; Jaffa, too, was trying to persuade them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”