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.