"Now you're the skipper of the _B.A_. I've finished with her, thank
Heaven! Griffiths, in the dinghy, can take you back now."
Having so satisfactorily (?) concluded the formalities of handing over
command, Wilson took some letters which I had brought for him, and went
off to read them. I presumed that he was going to Karachi to catch a
steamer back to Aden, but did not take the trouble to ask him before the
gunner and myself left the _Ras-al-Musat_.
If you had seen us being pulled inshore in that tiny dinghy to join my
first command you would have laughed. The dinghy's stern was nearly
level with the water, and her bows so cocked up in the air that Mr.
Scarlett had to creep for'ard to "trim the dish".
As we gradually drew nearer the shore, I noticed a weird odour in the
air.
"What's that?" I asked the bluejacket, sniffing it in.
"All them Arab or Persh'un places smell like that, sir," he said.
"You'll not notice it in a week's time."
I sucked it in through my nose. At last I had come to the edge of
things, and cut myself adrift from civilization. It was grand, and I
felt as happy as a bird--and looked like one, too, I expect, perched as
I was on the top of my two cases.
"That's 'er, sir," the bluejacket said presently, jerking his chin over
his shoulder. Then I saw the _Bunder Abbas_ for the first time. She
and I were to have many exciting experiences together during the next
few months.
As I saw her then she looked draggled to a degree. Her sides were a
positive disgrace--paint off in large patches; her awnings were dirty
and badly spread on bent, crazy-looking stanchions; and her rusty
unpainted cable hung drearily out of a most disreputable hawse-pipe.
In her bows, under the awning, there was a gun, in a dirty canvas
cover--a six-pounder I guessed--and aft two Maxims were cocked up at
different angles, in the most slovenly manner. Their water-jackets,
which should have been so bright, were painted a beastly mud colour, and
from the muzzle of one dangled a bunch of green bananas.
"Your own mother won't know you in a week's time, my sweetheart," I
chuckled to myself, as the bluejacket tugged at one oar and twisted the
dinghy alongside.
I swung myself aboard, to be met by a bearded petty officer with a
shifty, crafty face, who saluted me about a dozen times in the first two
minutes. Five or six disreputable-looking sailors peered round the
corner of the engine-room casings to take stock of me, and some lascars
sitting jabbering round a stew-pot took no notice whatever.
I looked round. The deck was littered with rubbish; men's clothes were
stretched on it everywhere--to dry; burnt matches and cigarette ends lay
in every corner.
"We ain't scrubbed decks yet," the petty officer said, following my eye,
his hand bobbing up and down to his forehead all the time. "Wouldn't
you like to see the orficer's cabin, sir?" he added hastily, to distract
my anger, and led me up a ladder, through an opening in the fore awning,
to a platform round the mast and funnel. On this platform deck, for'ard
of the mast, were the steering-wheel, compass, and engine-room
telegraphs, also a tiny little signal-locker; aft of the funnel was a
diminutive deck-house, about half the size of a railway compartment. It
had a low bunk on each side, with scarcely room to stand between them, a
few shelves, lockers under the bunks, and a cracked looking-glass.
Overhead the paintwork was blackened by an oil lamp which swung from the
roof and looked as if it had not been cleaned or trimmed for years.
Outside the cabin there was just enough deck space for a small folding
table and a couple of canvas folding chairs.
"Them chairs belonged to Mr. Collingwood, what died of sunstroke, and
the gunner, what went off 'un 'is 'ead," the petty officer explained.