The Baron and his men--eight of them--were on the firm sand now, running
along towards the dhow, cheering and whooping, when suddenly I heard
rifle-firing--rifles from behind the tops of those sand-dunes, rifles
from the tops of those beastly cliffs, and saw the sand spurting up all
round them as they ran. Through my glasses I could see heads peering
over the sand-dunes and rifles firing over them. I yelled to the men to
leave the dinghy and open fire again with the six-pounder.
Then two of those running figures fell; one rose and went on, the other
lay where he fell.
"Lie down and shoot back, or you'll all be killed," I shouted, like a
fool, as if they could hear me eight hundred yards away.
Then I realized that if they could reach the dhow they would obtain some
shelter from the fire.
I saw my chum fall, sprawling, and get up again, stoop to pick up his
revolver--he never would put the lanyard round his neck--and go on
again, slowly, limping. Two men stopped to help him, but I saw him
waving them to leave him, and they dashed to the side of the dhow, flung
themselves flat down, half in, half out of the water, and commenced
shooting. My Maxims were busy now, and keeping down the fire a little;
but for a couple of seconds poor old Popple Opstein was alone on the
beach, with bullet-spirts jumping up all round him. Those two seconds
seemed like ages, till, with a gasp of relief, I saw him gain the
shelter of the dhow and throw himself down among the others.
Thank goodness! he could not be very badly wounded.
But the dhow only gave shelter from the men behind the sand-hills; my
chum and his people were still entirely exposed to a dropping,
long-range fire from the tops of those cliffs, and bullets still
splashed and spurted all round the dhow.
The six-pounder shells were bursting well along the tops of the
sand-hills, and three men, left behind in the stranded cutter, were also
peppering them with their Maxim. These two guns kept the people on the
beach fairly quiet, so I cocked up my two Maxims and opened fire on the
cliff, the people up there immediately paying attention to us. A bullet
splintered the deck close to where I was standing, several whistled
through the awnings, others flattened themselves against the funnel.
Griffiths and I were standing there by the wheel and compass absolutely
exposed. I do not know how I looked, but I do know that I was chiefly
frightened lest I should look as frightened as I felt. I wondered what
Mr. Scarlett was doing. He was under the awning, so I could not see
him. A bullet smashed Percy's coffee-cup and broke it to atoms--bullets
were flying all round us. There was nothing for me to do; that was the
worst of it. To relieve the strain of being idle, I sent Griffiths to
bring up a rifle and some ammunition, and took the wheel myself.
Before he came back I saw the figures close to the dhow rise up and dash
into the water, wade round her stern, and disappear from view. Seven
figures I counted; that little white heap halfway along the sand only
made eight; so another must have been badly hit. But now they were safe
for a time, entirely sheltered by the dhow.
The natives, Afghans, Baluchis, whatever they were, thereupon turned
more rifles on to us and that stranded cutter--both from the sand-hills
and from the cliffs. The range from the sand-hills was well over twelve
hundred yards, and most of the firing was very wild; but one of our
chaps, Jones, a marine, working one of the Maxims, was shot through the
arm about this time. However, our high gunwales kept off most of the
bullets.
It was very different with that stranded cutter. She was not more than
six hundred yards away from the sand-hills, closer still to the foot of
the cliffs, and almost immediately one of the three men still working
her Maxim fell and was pushed aside or crawled away--I couldn't see
which.
Griffiths came up with his rifle. "Go on, fire yourself!" I shouted,
and he lay down and began potting at the people on the cliff, over our
heads. The shooting now slackened from there, and I quickly understood
why, for I saw fifty or sixty natives scampering down a cliff path and
wading through the shallow mouth of the creek. By the time I had
ordered a Maxim to swing round on them most of these had joined the
others behind the sand-hills. We bagged two or three, however.
I knew that we were in a horrid mess, and didn't want Mr. Scarlett to
come up to me--absolutely yellow in the face--and tell me so. Just as
he was blurting and stuttering out something about a falling tide and
getting that cutter afloat, people down below began shouting: "Look!
Look!"
Griffiths, peering over his shoulder with frightened eyes, pointed, and
I saw a regular horde of Afghans pouring over the tops of those
sand-hills and racing down the beach, straight for the stranded cutter.
I looked at her. Only one man was now working that Maxim, or trying to
do so, and making a bad job of it. Something had gone wrong with the
belt. He tried desperately to jerk it clear, failed, then gave it up,
caught sight of the yelling Afghans charging down on him, and hid under
the gunwale.
The six-pounder fired as rapidly as it could, and must have killed many,
but one of our Maxims had jammed and the other would not bear. Mr.
Scarlett's piercing voice was shrieking for me to turn the _Bunder
Abbas_ round so that he could use the second Maxim. I gave the wheel a
turn and rang down to the engine-room. Before I was able to turn her
side farther towards the beach that fierce rush had reached the water's
edge. Scores of wild Afghans were splashing through the sea. We could
hear them yelling as they waded knee-deep--waist-deep--towards the
cutter. Then we saw the two men still alive in her peer over the
gunwale, and one seized a rifle and began firing, but the other crawled
across the thwarts, let himself down over the stern, and commenced to
swim towards the _Bunder Abbas_.
A six-pounder will not stop a rush: its shells are not deadly enough. I
thought the Maxim would never fire. Looking at the dhow to see whether
our people were safe, I saw rifles sticking out from under her poop
railings, so knew that Popple Opstein and his men had climbed on board.
They, too, were firing on the Afghans charging through the water. On
these came; they were not thirty yards from the cutter; the man inside
it had his face turned appealingly to us.
Then Mr. Scarlett started the Maxim. He found the range in a
twinkling--he only had to follow the splash of the bullets till they
fell amongst the natives, and then wobble the gun--and it was impossible
to miss. Their shouts of triumph changed to wild shrieks of terror. It
was just as if a scythe had swept over them. They subsided under the
water--they disappeared--only a few, crouching till their heads hardly
showed above the surface, regained the beach and the protection of the
sand-hills.
There was no time for thinking of this sickening slaughter; my chum and
his men had to be brought off, his cutter had to be refloated, and that
dhow had still to be destroyed.
"Land and help him!" The thought did come into my head for a second,
but it would have been idiotic. We should only be putting our heads
into the same trap that he was in.
The Afghans had had such a terrible lesson that for a short time only a
few ventured to the edge of the sand-hills to fire on us. The fire from
the cliffs, whilst our Maxims were no longer keeping it down, became
somewhat more vigorous, and I knew that now was my chum's chance to rush
back along that beach and regain the cutter.
I shouted to the signal-man to semaphore across to him, but he must have
also realized that this was his opportunity, for almost immediately we
saw the bluejackets sliding down the dhow's side--two had to be helped
down--and then they all--seven of them-- came back along the water's
edge. Very slowly they came, for one man was being carried and my pal
was limping badly, though managing without assistance. Only a few
Afghans were firing at them, and these we stopped by mowing the edges of
the sand-hills with Maxim bullets wherever a head showed.
They seemed to be taking hours. I found myself yelling to them to try
to go faster. They kept on stopping to fire at the sand-hills. Then,
at last, they began wading out, and we cheered as we saw them climb
aboard the boat without further loss, get out their oars, and try to
push off. Our joy died down when we saw that they could not move her.
The tide had fallen, and the cutter was on top of a sandbank with not a
foot of water covering it. They jumped out again into the shallows and
strained and heaved, but not an inch could they shift her.
All this time the Afghans on the cliff were firing at them. They
clambered back into the boat and replied to this fire with rifles:
something had evidently gone wrong with their Maxim. Afghans now
appeared over the sand-hills immediately behind the cutter, where we
dare not fire for fear of hitting my chum's people. These, too, opened
fire on the cutter, and the water all round it was alive with bullet
splashes. Another man fell down in the boat and his rifle overboard.
Unless something was done very quickly they would all be killed. I
yelled for volunteers to pull the dinghy across and take them a rope.
Dobson, the leading seaman, and Webster, the corporal of marines, jumped
into her first. "Take the wheel and don't go farther inshore," I called
to Griffiths, and rushed down on deck to supervise the rope being passed
into the dinghy and coiled down in her stern-sheets. On my way I saw
Jaffa, standing at the foot of the ladder, aiming at the top of the
cliffs with a rifle. He was as calm as ever.
The dinghy was on our shore side, away from the cliffs and sheltered
from fire. We coiled all the ropes we had into her stern, bending one
to the end of the next. I rushed back to the wheel and moved the
_Bunder Abbas_ in towards the cutter until my bows touched the sand.
Then I gave the word to Dobson and Webster and they shot ahead of the
bows, the rope uncoiling and paying out as they pulled.
Directly they had cleared our bows the whole of the rifle fire was
turned on them, and they had not taken fifty strokes before Dobson was
hit. He dropped his oar, but grabbed it again, pulling with one hand.
A moment later he was struck a second time and fell forward.
Webster seized his oar and went on, but I shouted to him to come back,
and with a brilliant thought he made fast the rope and we hauled him
back. As the dinghy came near I saw that Dobson was dead. We lifted
him out and Mr. Scarlett jumped in.
"I'm going, sir," he said, and I was so astonished that I could say
nothing.
We laid Dobson on deck and jumped back to work our guns, whilst Mr.
Scarlett and Webster pulled madly towards the cutter, paying out the
rope and steering wildly. We yelled with delight when they reached the
cutter and passed the rope inboard.
In a moment the cutter's crew had clambered into the water again to
lighten the boat. They held up their hands to signal my rope made fast.
I gave the "_B.A._" a touch astern and stopped her engines, the rope
tautened, the cutter's crew shoved and pushed and yelled that she was
moving. In half a minute we had her afloat, her men scrambling in as
she slid into deep water; in ten minutes we were out of range, and in
half an hour she and the dinghy were both alongside, and I had dropped
anchor two miles from the cliffs and out of sight of the dhow. The
cutter was peppered with bullet holes, her gunwales, sides, and oars
splintered and grooved in a hundred places. She leaked like a sieve,
and water filled her to her thwarts.
She had one dead man on board--one of those left as boat-keepers--the
one I had seen shot when working the Maxim; one man shot through the
chest and leg; four others wounded (one with three bullet wounds through
soft parts), besides Popple Opstein.
"It went clean through my calf muscles," he told me. "It's nothing."
Not until then did anyone remember the man who had started to swim back
towards the _Bunder Abbas_ when those Afghans charged down. He had not
been seen since, and must have been drowned, or perhaps killed by a
bullet in the head. Two of the cutter's crew had been left on shore
dead, so these made the cutter's total casualties three killed, one
missing, and five wounded. Only four had escaped untouched.
The dead man and the wounded were all brought aboard the _Bunder Abbas_:
the dead who might only have been wounded, the wounded who so easily
might have been dead. A turn of the head, and a bullet which would have
only grazed your ear blows out your brains; you drop a cartridge, stoop
to pick it up, and a bullet which would have gone through your heart
wings on its way without your knowing that it had ever come and gone.
Whenever one sees dead and wounded brought back by the untouched men who
have been fighting alongside them, one cannot help thinking queer
thoughts, and casting enquiring glances at the survivors to see what
qualities they have which spared them. I must admit that I have never
yet noticed anything particularly noble about those who have escaped.
Since those gun-running days I have seen much fighting and many killed
and wounded, and the untouched have generally been cursing something or
somebody, giving relief to the strain on their nerves by cursing hard.
Thoughts take longer to write than to think, so they don't, in actual
practice, waste much time.
We were obliged to take every heavy weight out of the cutter to prevent
her sinking, and then tried to stop the bullet holes below the water
line.
Webster, the corporal of marines, was as handy with the medicine chest
and its bandages as he was with anything else I ever saw him try his
hands on. In half an hour he had made the wounded chaps as comfortable
as it was possible for them to be. Percy, too, was in his element
bringing them water, tinned milk, and coffee. He was like a dog in his
admiration for white men. If he had had a tail he would have wagged it
off that morning.
Until that cutter was safe I did not care how many rifles the Afghans
took out of the dhow in our absence; but directly she was fairly
watertight I left her at anchor with the dinghy, Moore, the timid
Goanese carpenter, and a couple of hands, to carry on repairs, and
steamed inshore again.
I kept wide of the cliffs (from which a terrific fire burst out) until
the beach and the dhow herself came in full view.
The shore was again alive with Afghans and their camels. Through my
glasses I could see sacks of rifles being thrown from the dhow on to the
sand, snatched up by eager men, and rapidly packed on the camels' backs.
A long string of heavily-laden camels was already disappearing behind
the sand-hills.
But I was not going to worry about them or Afghans. I was going to set
that dhow on fire with my shells.
At twelve hundred yards I opened fire.
"At the dhow!" I shouted to Mr. Scarlett. "Don't worry about people."
Her woodwork began flying, and I knew that the shells were bursting
inside her. It was only a question of time--the people aboard and close
to her had vanished at the first shell--and presently smoke began to
pour from her hatches. We cheered at this--those of us on deck working
the gun, Griffiths at the wheel, and poor old Popple Opstein supporting
himself against the deck rails. The rest I had sent down below under
cover.
We kept on firing at her, and soon there was a rush of black smoke,
small explosions took place aboard her, her stern blew out, her masts
came tumbling down, and she took fire fore and aft. 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.
Hoisting in the dinghy, and taking the empty, waterlogged cutter in tow,
I steamed very slowly seawards to find the _Intrepid_ and Nicholson.
Four men killed, one missing, and five wounded among the cutter's crew,
one man killed and one wounded aboard the _Bunder Abbas_, was the price
of that Sunday morning's work.
As we left Sheikh Hill behind us reaction set in, and we were very
depressed.
The edge of civilization! I could not help thinking of that. At home
people were just getting out of bed, wondering what Sunday clothes they
should wear. I wished that some of them could have seen how we had spent
that morning. If only I could have got hold of the people, English,
French, or Germans--I didn't know and I didn't care--who had
manufactured those rifles or sent them out there, I should have enjoyed
torturing them.
Poor old Popple Opstein sat moodily outside my cabin under the awning,
with his elbows on the table and his face buried in his hands. If I had
been in his place I know that I should have done exactly as he had done;
but, poor old chap, he knew as well as I did that he had bungled the
whole affair, that we might have destroyed the dhow and the rifles
without landing or losing a single man. He was suffering the tortures
of the damned.
I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. Nothing I could say would
do him any good, and nothing did either of us say.
I dared not ask him if he was certain that those two men who had been
left on the beach were actually killed; the thought of them having
fallen alive into the hands of the Afghans was too horrible. Instead, I
asked one of his men, and, thank God! he was certain that they were both
dead. The one who had dropped halfway along the beach had been shot
through the head, and the other, the one shot whilst lying half in the
water under the dhow's stern, had been lying next to him, and his head
was under the water all the time they were there.
The only touch of humour about the whole tragic business came from
Percy. Dressed in his best, and looking very important, he had come up
to me as we were in the middle of destroying that dhow and asked,
pointing to my chum: "Master have guest to breakfast?" I had laughed
like a fool, till I hurt myself.
As we were eating the food he had prepared for us--on the way back to
the _Intrepid_ that was--I turned to the gunner. "Mr. Scarlett," I
said, "if you are a coward you are the bravest coward I have ever heard
of."
"I do things like that just to try and beat it down, sir," he mumbled;
"but it's just as bad when the next show comes along. I can't help it,
sir; I really can't. I know I look frightened; but I don't look half as
frightened as I really am."
Percy looked upon him as a demigod--that was very evident.
*CHAPTER VII*
*The Battle of the Paraffin Can*
We were only able to tow that waterlogged cutter very slowly, so we did
not sight the _Intrepid_ until three o'clock that afternoon. Half an
hour later we crawled alongside, and my chum and I went on board to
report. He looked as if he was going to his execution, and though I did
my best to make him "buck up", and tried to hammer it into his head that
we had done our best, and could do no more, he seemed more "down in the
mouth" than ever.
Commander Duckworth made us tell him all that had happened, and I
thought afterwards that if only people at home--just coming out of
church they should have been at that hour--could have peered down into
that luxuriously-furnished cabin of the _Intrepid_ in the middle of the
Straits of Ormuz, could have heard the story which my chum told, and
seen the agony in his face as he told it, how it would have impressed
them!
Cool, grey-green silk curtains kept out the glare from the port-holes
and skylight; green-silk lampshades on the tables fluttered in the
grateful breeze from the electric fans; pictures of English scenery, old
naval prints, photographs of beautiful women in evening and Court dress,
and photograph groups of polo teams and their ponies covered the white
bulkheads. From photographs in silver frames, standing on the tables
between silver cups and trinkets, more delicate women looked out with
smiling sympathetic eyes, whilst backwards and forwards past them paced
the commander in his spotless white uniform. The Baron and I were
sitting on a dainty, silk-covered sofa, digging our bare feet and toes
into a soft Persian rug. We had no clothes on except dirty, open cotton
shirts (the sleeves rolled up), and a pair of dirty duck "shorts"
halfway up our thighs. Our bare legs and knees, our sunburnt chests and
arms, looked very much out of place among the luxurious surroundings.
Tied below his left knee Popple Opstein had a blood-stained
handkerchief, and on my head and forehead was the dressing which
Nicholson had put there three days ago.
My chum still wore his revolver belt and holster, and, for once, the
dirty lanyard was round his neck.
"I made a fool of myself, sir," he blurted out; "I'd never had a chance
before, and I went straight for her." His face was drawn with pain and
shame at his want of discretion.
"You both want a brandy-and-soda," was all Commander Duckworth said when
he had heard our tale.
He made us drink one--it was iced, and it was grand--and said not a word
of reproof for our foolhardiness. If he had stormed and cursed us, I do
not know what we should have done.
I dreaded terribly that my chum would not be allowed to take his cutter
away again on account of his wound--if for no other reason--but I think
that the commander realized his distressed state of mind, and I breathed
freely when he quietly told us to repair all damages, that fresh men
would be sent to replace casualties (my chum winced), and that we were
to report as soon as we were ready to return to our stations.
I saw Popple Opstein's face flush with gratitude. He said, tremblingly:
"Thank you, sir!" and limped out.
Commander Duckworth stopped me. "I don't know whether I am doing wisely
or not in allowing him to go away again. Just have a look at him every
daybreak, and, if that wound goes wrong, bring him back. Tell Nicholson
to report to me what he thinks of it before he does go, and--and--just
let him know how things stand."
"Very good, sir. Thank you, sir, very much! He's rather a strange old
chap, fearfully sensitive, and he'd break his heart if you stopped him
going."
The cutter was hoisted to the davits, and, whilst all the carpenters and
ship-wrights in the ship were repairing her, the _Intrepid_ slowly
steamed inshore, towing my launch astern. Nicholson found time to look
at the wounds in my scalp and forehead. He told me that they had healed
splendidly; but when I saw them in a looking-glass--a great red line
across my forehead and another on the side of my head across a patch of
half-grown hair--I could not help making a grimace.
"It won't show in a month's time," he said, laughing. "Don't you worry
about your beauty being spoilt; the girls will like you all the better
for it."
Strangely enough, I did happen to be thinking that perhaps if that
little, yellow-haired lady saw me now, her mocking grey eyes might look
a little serious--for once. At any rate she could not possibly treat me
as an infant. I grew quite red--though that I should have done so was
perfectly absurd, because I scarcely knew her, had only spoken to her
once or twice, and then she had treated me as if I were a midshipman or
a mere child.
Nicholson read my thoughts--or thought he did--and chaffed me till I
grew more red than ever, and wanted to kick him.
Five miles off Sheikh Hill the _Intrepid_ lowered the repaired cutter,
the _Bunder Abbas_ came alongside for me and to take in more ammunition,
my chum and an entirely fresh crew manned his boat, and I towed him back
to his old billet. He looked so sad and "rigid" as the cliffs opened
out and he saw the blackened mass of woodwork, all that remained of the
dhow which had caused that tragedy of the morning, that I felt very
nervous to leave him alone for the night. It was quite dark when I
yelled "good night" to him and steamed away down the coast to
Kuh-i-Mubarak, to try to find Evans.
We found him surely enough--or rather he found us. He mistook the
"_B.A._" in the darkness for a dhow, and fired twenty or thirty rounds
from his Maxim before he saw my flashing lamp.
He was awfully apologetic; though, as no damage had been done, it did
not matter. He had not seen a suspicion of a dhow, nor had he heard the
noise of our firing, so went nearly "off his head" with excitement when
I told him what had happened.
Having found that he was safe and sound, I went back to my patrolling
line.
For several weeks everything went on extremely quietly. Every morning I
would hail old Popple Opstein, and find how things were going with him;
sometimes, when there was no hurry, he even came aboard for a cup of
coffee. Every morning I visited Evans, and these two events were about
the only excitement we had; except, of course, the weekly Thursday
afternoon alongside the _Intrepid_.
The weather was monotonously fine, and it really was monotonous work.
Neither was Mr. Scarlett exactly the type of man I should have chosen to
live with. We agreed very well, indeed, but he was of a morbid
disposition, never laughed except cynically, and seldom talked much
unless something or other stimulated his rather brooding, sluggish mind.
Then, as you already know, it was difficult to make him stop.
I liked talking at meals--he didn't; and, as a matter of actual fact, I,
being a cheerful kind of chap, found him rather a "damper".
Wiggins had returned to the _Bunder Abbas_, and a leading seaman named
Ellis, a sturdy, hard-working, little man, rather opinionated and fond
of "gassing", had taken Dobson's place. He and Moore, the petty
officer, did not "get on" at all well together. Moore was jealous of
him, and was for ever coming to me complaining that "that 'ere Ellis
took too much on 'isself."
Several times Moore brought him up to my platform deck (which we used as
a quarter-deck) and reported him for disrespect. Precious little
sympathy did he get from me, however. Still, in such a tiny little ship
it was unpleasant to know that they were not on friendly terms. The
jealousy first started, I fancy, when we had a "sing-song" one night.
Both of them had sung songs, and Ellis had been more often "encored"
than Moore. The reason seems perfectly inane, but full-grown men, under
conditions such as these were, often behave in the most childish way
possible.
During these first weeks Mr. Scarlett and Jaffa, between them, put me up
to all the tricks of the gun-running business. What one didn't know of
the Arabs' dodges for concealing rifles the other did; so I became quite
an expert, theoretically.
One evening when it was fairly cool--after a regular furnace of a
day--Mr. Scarlett became communicative. We had been speaking of boarding
suspected dhows.
"Now take the case, sir, of a dhow flying the Turkish flag. You steam
up to her; down goes her sail; over you bob to her in the dinghy with
Jaffa, and tell the nakhoda to show his papers. You dare not board
until you have seen them. He hands them down to you. You look through
them--written in Turkish, English, and Hindustani; all three
probably--and so long as they are in order, whether you know for certain
that she's brim-full of rifles or whether you only suspect that she is,
you dare not board and search her.
"I remember," he said, "running up against a fine dhow one morning--I
was away in the old _Pigeon's_ cutter then--a long time since. We ran
her down, headed her off till she couldn't get away, felt sure that she
was going to be a fair prize, and yelled "Hallib! Hallib!" until she
lowered her sails. And that reminds me, sir; never go alongside any dhow
until she's lowered her sail. They Arabs have a nasty trick of waiting
for you to come alongside, and then lowering the sail so that it and its
big yard drops into the boat and smothers it. I've known 'em carry away
a cutter's mast that way. Whilst you are helpless under the sail they
pot at you, hoist it up again, and sail away. I've been 'had' like that
myself once.
"Just you see that sail properly lowered and then make them hold up the
halyards to show you that they are 'unbent', because they are as nippy
as sharks a-hoisting it again.
"Well, as I was saying, we were as keen as mosquitoes over that 'ere
dhow, but, as we caught hold of her with our boat-hooks, she hoisted
Turkish colours and we dared not board her. The nakhoda, grinning at
us, leant over her side and handed down his papers. These were in
perfect order, so we no more dared board her than we dared stop the
mail-steamer. What riled us chiefly was the brazen-faced way they did
things. The cargo was put down as one hundred cases of champagne,
consigned to a dirty little Persian village of about twenty miserable
fishing-huts. We knew it well, we did, before--and after. We felt
jolly well 'had'. We were as certain as 'eggs is eggs' that she was
chock-full of rifles and ammunition, but they were as safe where they
were as if they'd been on top of the Eiffel Tower.
"The lieutenant in charge of us cursed the Arab nakhoda, and called his
ancestors dogs and sons of dogs, hoping he knew enough Hindustani to
understand. Then off we had to shove.
"Our only chance was to catch those rifles on their way to the beach
whilst the dhow was unloading, or when they once got there. All we
could do was to pull off again and follow her, and it was about all we
could do to keep up with her until she reached her blessed village just
before dark.
"We'd been there a week before--for water--so we knew what it was like.
If there had been thirty half-starved fishermen then I'd be overshooting
the mark; now the beach was crowded with rascally Afghans and their
camels, and no sooner did the dhow drop her anchor, close in to the
beach, than those cases of champagne--about five feet long they were,
each holding a dozen fat rifles we felt sure--were bundled into boats.
"We had a Gardner machine-gun in our bows, and opened fire with that and
our old Martin Henrys; but there must have been a couple of hundred
Afghans letting rip at us, so we had to pull out of range and watch
those cases of champagne being lashed on the camels' backs until it was
too dark to see anything more. At any rate, all those rifles got
ashore, and you can guess what they were used for later on--for potting
at British Tommies trying to keep order on the Indian frontier.
"Don't you go away with the idea that we English don't have a hand in
the game," Mr. Scarlett continued gloomily. "Why, sir, many's the time
I've seen captured rifles with the old 'Tower' mark on them, showing
that they'd been made in England--old-fashioned Army rifles some of
them, others not. And the tricks they're up to! My word, they are as
artful as a bagful of monkeys! I've helped search a couple of hundred
dhows or more in my time, and that's taught me a thing or two."
"The first dodge as I remember bowling out--and the simplest of 'em,"
Mr. Scarlett told me another evening, as he sipped his tot of rum--for
it was not until Percy had brought along his rum and he had taken
several "sips", when the crew had "piped down" and everything was quiet,
that he generally started his "talking machine"--"they built double
bottoms in their dhows, made 'em so cleverly that we used to think they
were the real inner skin. But we happened to have emptied one of her
cargo, and walking about inside her she sounded hollow under our feet,
so we ripped up a board and found a snug little collection of rifles
lying there. Of course the nakhoda swore he knew nothing about them; he
and his crew called upon Allah and most of the minor prophets to testify
to that, but it didn't prevent them doing their five months 'chokey' or
losing their dhow. A nice little haul that was, and the word was passed
along to 'sound' the bottoms of all the dhows we overhauled. We used to
bang 'em with the butts of our rifles. They gave up that dodge after a
while and invented something 'cuter' still. They'd fasten ten or twelve
long ropes to the keel, outside her, bringing them over the side on
deck, and they'd lash the free ends to sacks of rifles. If they sighted
a gunboat or a launch, or any of our people, and there was a risk of
being caught and searched, they'd simply drop them overboard and let
them hang down in the water suspended from the keel. Along we would
come, and find nothing wrong; search her high and low, and let her go,
with our blessing or the other thing. Then one of our launches happened
to come upon a dhow unexpectedly, and caught them doing it, heaving the
sacks of rifles overboard--took her by surprise--and that game was 'up'.
Never you leave a dhow, sir, till you've 'underrun' her.[#] You'd be
surprised how many rifles we picked up that way.
[#] Underrun = drop a bight or loop of rope over the bows and haul it
along under her keel.
"Then there's another dodge they have round about these coasts. All
along the Arabian side there are plenty of mangrove trees, and a great
trade in firewood is carried on with the Persian coast. So what was
easier for a dhow than to stow a dozen or more rifles at the bottom of
the hold and fill up with firewood on the top of them? They'd chance us
getting tired of unloading them; a cutter cruising by herself couldn't
do it, because you daren't throw any of the stuff overboard, and there
wasn't room on the dhow's deck for all the wood stowed below. Why, sir,
I've seen the whole of the _Pigeon's_ upper deck on both sides full up
to the level of the 'nettings' with chunks of firewood. Just imagine
the amount of work that meant--five or six hours in the horrid
heat--every chap feeling as limp as putty with the climate and the
monotony. A cutter cruising by herself either had to let her go or
stand by the dhow, wasting perhaps three or four days, till her gunboat
came along to victual her.
"However, we did search them, and we did find rifles, which meant
'Good-bye' for that dhow and 'chokey' for her crew. They found that
trick not worth the risk, these people being generally law-abiding
people (more or less), simply tempted every now and then to make a
larger profit by carrying a few rifles. They weren't what you might
call reg'lar hands at the business.
"And there's another thing they do, sir; on top of the firewood they
often load a small cargo of their dried fish, thinking the British
sailor won't stomach the smell of it. Ugh! the stink from some of those
dhows! Why, we sometimes never got rid of the smell of it for weeks.
"You never heard about the mail-steamers--the Royal British
Mail--carrying rifles themselves, I suppose, sir?" he asked, a little
less gloomily as the incongruity of it appealed to him. "Why, sir, for
one whole six months the mail-steamer brought up regular consignments of
sugar from Karachi to Bushire and landed them there for a respectable
firm of merchants. One fine day a careless chap at a winch, who was
lowering a cask of sugar into a lighter, let it drop. The cask was
stove in, and instead of sugar they found half a dozen rifles stowed in
pieces, packed in saw-dust. That was an eye-opener, I can tell you.
The mail-steamers don't carry so many casks of sugar now as they did
then," Mr. Scarlett finished, smiling sardonically.
Another night he became talkative and began:
"You remember that chap who fired at us--the first time we shoved our
nose under the cliffs at Sheikh Hill? I told you for certain he was an
Afghan and couldn't possibly help firing his rifle at a white man.
Well, sir, they often send one or two of these fellows across to the
Arabian coast in the empty dhows, just to see that the rifles are
brought to the proper place. You can always tell if there's one of
these chaps aboard a dhow when you come along to search her, because
he'll fire at you for a dead 'cert'. What we did was to make the crew
line the side nearest us, after they'd lowered the sail and unbent the
halyards. Our sportsman, the Afghan (or Afghans) dar'n't fire then for
fear of hitting his friends, or had to climb up where we could see him,
which didn't give him much of a chance, we being standing by waiting for
him. Still, he didn't mind being riddled with bullets so long as he got
in a shot at us English, more especially if he'd hit any of us.
"The only thing in this world he does fear and does mind is the sea. If
there's a bit of a lop running you may bet your life that Mr. Afghan is
as sea-sick as a dog, and you'll find him coiled up like a cat somewhere
under the poop, without a kick left in him. He'd give anyone, white man
or no white man, all he possessed, if he'd only kill him right
out--that's when he's sea-sick.
"He's a terrible bad sailor, is the Afghan!" Mr. Scarlett said
reflectively; "that's the only good point about him except being such a
born fighter."
Mr. Scarlett, as you know, would talk about gun-running occasionally,
but never once in those weeks did he mention that bracelet snake of his.
It was covered with a bandage which he used to replace very carefully
every morning; sometimes I happened to catch him doing this and saw it,
but as he never referred to it neither did I.
Percy, I am sure, was very inquisitive to know what was the matter with
his arm, because, as I said before, everything about Mr. Scarlett was of
absorbing interest to him; though, after he had been kicked out of the
cabin once or twice when Mr. Scarlett was dressing, he never ventured
near it again until he was called.
Things went on like this for three weeks--three weeks of calm, intensely
hot weather. Popple Opstein's wound had healed without anything going
wrong with it; my scars were becoming less marked. Jones, the private of
marines, was well--as were all the other wounded. Popple Opstein was
quite himself again, and in fact everything was going on very
comfortably if monotonously. It certainly was monotonous, because
during all that time we never sighted one single dhow, and although the
_Intrepid_ had stopped and searched a few farther out at sea she had not
found a single rifle over and above the proper number a dhow is allowed
to carry for her own protection.
Then, to vary the tedium, it began to blow. A shamel got up very
quickly, and blew steadily for eight or nine days. It was not so bad
that the _Bunder Abbas_ couldn't keep the sea and do her patrolling, but
the two cutters had to hug tight at anchor in their two little creeks.
However, Evans grew restless after the third day, and put to sea one
morning, leaving the shelter of Kuh-i-Mubarak and beating into the
shamel long after he ought to have run back again. A squall carried
away his foremast when he was already to leeward of it, and he rapidly
began to drift farther to the south. Fortunately I happened to sight
him, went down to help him, and took him in tow. Towing him back into
shelter against a heavy head sea strained some of the planks in the
bows, below the water-lines, and the boat began leaking badly. We had
only left the _Intrepid_ four days previously, so that she would not be
coming inshore to revictual us for another three; and, as it would have
been foolish to attempt to tow the cutter right out to sea to find her
and repair damages, we decided to beach her, do a little amateur
caulking, and try to repair the foremast if that was possible.
There was a jolly little sandy beach about half a mile up the creek, so
we beached her there after Evans had transferred his Maxim, ammunition,
and stores to the _Bunder Abbas_. I anchored close by, in case he was
attacked. There was little chance of that, however, because the village
of Sudab lay more than three miles away behind the sand-hills, not a
single living soul was in sight, and none could approach without being
seen for at least a mile.
His men were soon busy working and skylarking, stretching their legs on
the strip of sand, and thoroughly enjoying themselves. Not a sign of an
Arab or an Afghan, not even of a miserable Baluchi, did we see all that
day. In fact, things seemed so safe and pleasant that I landed most of
my fellows too, and we got up a cricket match, with an empty paraffin
tin for a wicket, a ball made of "spun yarn", and a bat made out of a
broken oar. We equalized numbers with my lascars, and had a most
exciting game, the _Bunder Abbas_ winning the championship of
Kuh-i-Mubarak just before the "spun-yarn" ball was worn out completely.
The work on the boat had been finished, the seams recaulked, and the
mast repaired; but Evans decided, as it was going to be a perfect
moonlight night, to stay there until next morning, in order that his men
might have a change from the cramped cutter and get a good night's
sleep.
At sunset I took all my people back to the _Bunder Abbas_, leaving the
cutter's crew playing football with that paraffin tin, with their bare
feet, until they grew tired of that, and kicked it into the edge of the
sea. They then made themselves snug for the night, lying down on the
crest of the beach with their rifles by their sides, in case they were
attacked, and with one man doing "sentry go", to give warning if
necessary.
When the moon rose I could see them all lying comfortably there, one
sleepy-looking figure sitting up among them, and some way along the sand
the cutter, with the sea--it was just about high water--lapping against
her stern-post. 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. (I told you what a "nervy" chap he was.)
One of his men came crawling down towards us, yelling to us to open
fire. It did not want his shouts to alarm us; my fellows were already on
deck, looking wildly up and down the creek to see who was attacking.
Not a sign of an enemy could I see, and it was light enough to see half
a mile; but the hummocks of sand stretching inland and along the beach
cast such very dark shadows that whoever was attacking could lie there
absolutely hidden.
To judge by the amount of ammunition the cutter's crew were expending,
Evans was evidently certain of his enemy. Spurts of sand were flying up
just in front of his men, although I could not see any flashes coming
from out of those dark shadows. I admit that I felt considerably
flustered; Mr. Scarlett's face looked ghastly in the moonlight, and I
wished with all my heart that I had not allowed Evans to sleep ashore.
I could not help thinking of how Popple Opstein had been caught, and was
very fearful that something of the same kind was going to happen again.
If we could only have seen something to fire at it would have been less
frightening, but there was nothing.
Then Evans himself came rushing down to where the cutter lay, and yelled
to me to open fire whilst his men shoved her off.
I thought he could not possibly have made a mistake, so banged away with
a Maxim at those shadows. "There, sir, there! Look there, sir!" Moore
suddenly rushed at me, pointing excitedly to a dark object apparently
crawling along just by the water's edge not a hundred yards away.
The cutter's crew had seen it too, their bullets were spurting close to
it, but Evans shrieked for them to come down and shove off the cutter,
so I started the Maxim. We saw our bullets splashing all round, ceased
fire, and waited for anything else to appear. Whatever that was, it
never moved again.
By this time Evans had got the cutter afloat, and had come alongside the
_Bunder Abbas_.
"Arabs crawling along the beach!" he shouted. "The sentry saw them
first, fired at them--we've all fired at them--we've not seen any more
since."
"Were they firing at you?" I called down, when he left off shouting at
me.
He didn't know--he was not certain of anything except that his fellows
had managed to kill at least one man.
At any rate, whatever had happened, no one was attacking us now. I
stopped the Maxim, and together we waited on the qui vive all night, in
case we were attacked again.
When the moon sank, an hour and a half before the sun was due to take
her place, it became extremely dark, which made it most trying and
nervous work waiting for daylight. Instead of the good night's sleep we
had all promised ourselves, not a soul among us so much as closed his
eyes after the alarm.
At daybreak not a sign of any living thing could be seen on those
desolate sand-hills or on the beach, so we ventured ashore to pick up
the cutter's masts and sails, which had been left behind in the panic.
I went too, to have a look at the chap we had shot, and guess what we
found--fifty yards along the beach--that paraffin tin! just where we had
thought we had seen the enemy crawling along to attack us--simply
riddled with bullets. It was like a nutmeg grater, and the sand all
round it was scored and tossed about by hundreds more.
I simply sat down and laughed and laughed till I thought something would
crack. The whole thing was so obvious. It was high water when the men
went to sleep; as the tide fell it left that tin high and dry: the
sentry, suddenly catching sight of it and its shadow, lost his head,
thought it was someone crawling along the beach, let off his rifle at
it, woke the others, and in their excitement they fired at every shadow
they saw.
"You killed him, sure enough," I roared, holding up the perforated tin;
"the attack was repulsed with great slaughter."
It was not until we had walked behind the sand-hills, and found not a
single trace of footsteps, that Evans would allow that the whole thing
had been a false alarm.
"Your Maxim fired at it too," he said angrily. "You've made a fool of
yourself as well."
Evans never heard the last of his paraffin tin, nor did his boat's crew;
and, later on, when the yarn (with additions) spread aboard the
_Intrepid_, we all came in for a great deal of chaff. For months
afterwards, a messmate hankering after a black eye had only to ask a man
belonging to that cutter's crew, or to the _Bunder Abbas_, what kind of
an Afghan a paraffin tin was most like, and he got one.
However, we had made the cutter watertight and mended the foremast
(after a fashion), though it was not strong enough to "look at" the
shamel still blowing; so, leaving Evans to wait until it had blown
itself out, I struggled up to wind'ard to have a look at Popple Opstein
and find out how he had fared.
I found him snugly anchored under the lee of Sheikh Hill. He was so
close inshore that when I poked in to have a yarn, the "_B.A._" could
not get within half a mile of his cutter.