Gunboat and Gun-runner: A Tale of the Persian Gulf

"If this goes on much longer we'll find ourselves blown a hundred miles out to sea," Dobson roared in my ear. "We'd best cut away the mast. She'll ride more easy and won't drift...

Percy brought me a cup of coffee, smiling, and looking at the dhow. I drank it at a gulp. Extraordinarily thirsty I was, and the air had a peculiar "dry feeling".

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 m...

Some unarmed camel men began shouting to the men round the gap, and ten or twelve of these left the group round that cooking bowl and began the perilous descent. They had not go...

"Well, after dodging in and out of the bays in that rocky coast, shoving our nose in, finding nothing, and shunting out again, we found him, one morning, anchored at the head of...

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 rat...

Mr. Fisher joined us presently, and we three, through our glasses, examined the shore and desert plains running inland behind the line of telegraph-posts. Before we had steamed...

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...

The man who had been so desperately wounded was dead. "Nothing could have saved him," Nicholson told me, as though I might think he had not done enough for him. He brightened wh...

He went farther down the path, asking at every two or three paces whether we could see him. When our eyes had become accustomed to following his white clothes we could distingui...

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 th...

Mr. Fisher kept on complaining of the few men he had left--fifteen all told--which was a ridiculous number to protect all three of the vulnerable sides; but I implored him to ar...

On the chance of his coming I had given very strict orders that no one should say where Mr. Scarlett had gone, and when I took him all round the _Bunder Abbas_ his face fell as...

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 f...

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.

"Do you know that we've only got enough ammunition for one more show like this morning? That's a fact," Mr. Scarlett growled, turning furiously on him. "This is going to be a re...

Already some at least of the Afghans were recovering their fright, for as we marched down to the beach we came in for a sharp "sniping", and Jones the marine was shot through th...

The head-man was along in a jiffy, bringing another sheep with him. I hardly recognized him for a moment in a green turban and a scarlet burnous with a flaming scarlet belt, int...

"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...

When day broke after that horrid night those two camels had disappeared from under the nabac trees. Seizing my telescope and looking towards the mountains I could see them enter...

I thought how old Popple Opstein's face would have beamed, and his yellow hair stood up, if only he had been here with me on that edge of rocks. Yes, here I was literally on the...

For many years the fierce, unruly tribes beyond the north-west frontier of India have only been able to obtain rifles from the Arabian coast. Arab dhows bring them across the Pe...

"What would you do in my place?" he asked. "Here I'm given a fairly important job, to protect this well and keep peace between the two towns. I've done it so successfully that t...

She looked me through and through as I took it, as though she was not certain that she could rely on me; but then she seemed satisfied, for she knelt down close to the bed, with...