Part 15

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, into which he had stuck silver-mounted daggers (the green turban I found out afterwards was the one Jassim had lost that awful night, and I remembered that he was not wearing it when he followed his wounded son through the gap). Across his knees he had one of the rifles we had given him--each man in the boat had one--and he was treating it as if it was a baby or something alive. When he stepped on board, all smiles and friendliness, he brought it with him, and kept on patting it affectionately, shaking a bag slung from his shoulder by a piece of coarse string, and smiling like a big baby when the cartridges inside it rattled.

He was vastly amusing in his new finery. He told Jaffa, for my edification, that "men of Kalat al Abeid no fish--so much good things no work any more--Arab trader from Muscat bring so much food--dates, rice, cloth, beads, bracelets for women--brass cooking-pots; never want nothing no more. No fear Bedouins--taffenk--fishenk[#]--kill them all."

[#] Rifles, cartridges.

Jaffa soon found out that, as I thought, he never bothered to keep even a few men posted in the gap in the mountains. "It was absurd to keep them there in the daytime: surely they could see the Bedouins coming down from the ravine and shoot them; and as for at night, why, everyone knew that devils and horned dragons breathing flame came and went through that gap during the dark hours."

If he had spent the night with us up there, whilst the _Intrepid's_ shells were bursting, he might have had some foundation for his yarn.

At any rate, not a man of the village dared stay there after dark, and it was useless work trying to chaff the old chap out of his superstitions. He certainly had not seen any devils or horned dragons breathing flame--no one alive had; but their fathers had told them about them, and that was good enough for him.

"Sometimes hear big noise of wind rushing through the gap," Jaffa interpreted, as the old man evidently tried to back his superstition with some tangible facts.

"Well, ask him about the leopards. Tell him I want to go there and shoot some," I told Jaffa.

He was quite willing to talk about them, but did not want to give me the trouble of climbing all that way. He patted his rifle, pointed to those of his men, and Jaffa explained, without a smile on his face: "The white sea-lord shall recline in the shade of my hut whilst I and my men go and shoot leopard--bring back plenty skins, and plenty claws to make necklace for white sea-lord."

"But the white sea-lord jolly well wants to do the shooting himself," I laughed, "and to-morrow too."

When this was interpreted to the old man--I must call him sheikh, now that he was so important--he smiled, as though he thought me rather a mad ass.

"Well, tell him I'll come ashore to-morrow an hour before sunrise, and we'll have a great day together."

That was arranged satisfactorily, so I gave him a packet of cigarettes, and he went ashore, still patting and fondling his rifle, to hurry up the embarkment of the remaining camels.

*CHAPTER XII*

*Mr. Scarlett Bares his Arm*

Mr. Scarlett was in such high spirits at getting safely away from Muscat that he declared his intention of coming shooting with me, and he did. I left Webster, the corporal of marines, in charge of the "_B.A._", and took Moore, the petty officer, Hartley, the lazy signal-man (who was so fat I knew he'd sweat his soul out climbing up the mountains), and the two marines, Jones and Gamble. Of course Jaffa came with us; we could do nothing without our aristocratic Persian interpreter.

Early as it was, we found the shore swarming with the villagers, helping the crews of those dhows to embark the last of the captured camels, and making enough noise to prevent any respectable devil or horned dragon venturing within a hundred miles of them.

When they saw us they hastily rushed back to their huts, and by the time we had landed and found the sheikh waiting for us near his white-domed well, they came running back--the whole crowd of them--every man with a rifle and a bag of cartridges. At a word from the beaming sheikh they began firing their rifles to welcome us. How it was that no one was hit was a marvel, for they knew less about handling them than I do of a sewing-machine.

You may bet your last dollar that I was not going shooting with that little lot, and it took Jaffa at least a quarter of an hour of talking before they stole away to their huts, and came sorrowfully back without their rifles, but with much more useful spears and sticks.

I asked Jaffa how he had managed this.

"Tell them in England country sheikh ask great man shoot--insult if villagers shoot too."

I could not help laughing at the idea of a day's "shoot" at home when all the beaters from the countryside carried rifles. It would make some "shoots" a good deal more exciting than they often are.

The sheikh himself would have sent his rifle away as well, though I saw that it would almost break his heart to do so. However, I explained by gestures that I wanted him to shoot with me, and his pride and joy were comical to see.

Eventually we shoved off for the ravine, followed by hooded women bearing huge chatties of water, and every "toddler" in the village carrying a bigger or smaller bundle of dry date-palm leaves. It was as quaint a shooting party as ever I had seen.

As we traversed the rocky slopes across which the _Intrepids_ had advanced to the attack of the mouth of the ravine, the natives spread out to pick up battered bullets and empty cartridge cases. They were lying there in hundreds, and every big stone had one or two white marks where bullets had struck it. At the mouth of the ravine, at the spot where the Arabs had first taken up a position, the stones and rocks were white with splashes and fragments of nine-pounder shells, and fuses and shrapnel bullets lay among them. Close by were three cairns with wooden crosses. These were the graves of the three who had been killed, and the sheikh explained that he and his people had piled up those big stones so that the wolves and jackals should not disturb them.

Passing through the ravine we once more entered that vast hollow, left the sunshine behind us, and craned our necks upwards to see the gap. Six days ago, when I was there, it and the path had been full of living creatures and ringing with shouts from one zigzag to another, as the bluejackets and villagers tried to bring down the camels. Now the gloom was haunted with silence and loneliness. Except for two or three bloated vultures, which flew heavily upwards and disappeared over the rim, not a thing moved. The not-yet-whitened skeletons of several camels showed what a feast they and the jackals had made.

As we did on that first memorable day, so we did on this. The villagers were ordered to remain at the bottom whilst the sheikh, Mr. Scarlett, myself, and the rest of the men climbed up the zigzag. We left Hartley below; he solemnly shook his head when he saw what kind of a path it was, and, as he was already pretty well "done up", I let him stay. He promptly went to sleep.

When we did reach the top, walked through the gap, and looked down into the valleys beyond, I almost expected to see the huge snake of a caravan wriggling up to us again. I showed Mr. Scarlett where we had first seen it, and pointed out the rocks behind which we had crouched nearly all that day; also the rock on which Jaffa had stood calling out in the dark: "Khalli bunduk 'ak! Ma kattle kum! Ist agel!"

He was very interested, but the sheikh was still more impatient, so we spread out along the crest just as we had done before, and then he gave the signal for the villagers to beat up towards us.

I don't know what I imagined they would do. They were not flies, or even goats, so I could hardly expect them to climb up the precipice; but what actually occurred was that, after spreading over the whole of the bottom of the "coffee-cup", yelling and throwing stones into any places likely to conceal a leopard, they all made for the zigzag path and came up it very swiftly, one behind the other, yelling like fury, beating the rocks with their spears as they passed them, the ones in rear beating the rocks which had already been struck a hundred times already, just as vigorously as the first. Occasionally they threw blazing bundles of date-palm leaves into crevices and caves; but, except for this and the noise they made, their ideas of what was wanted were very laughable.

The sheikh had lain down close to me. Presently he gave an exclamation and pointed. I saw a leopard slinking round a rock just ahead of some shouting villagers; he was at least four hundred yards away, and before I could stop the old man he had fired his rifle, regardless of the fact that if his aim was anywhere in that direction he was far more likely to hit one of his own people than the leopard. I need not have worried myself. The bullet struck a rock close below us and shrieked away into the sky, whilst the recoiling butt struck his cheek. First of all he looked to see whether the leopard was dead, and as it had disappeared behind a rock he was as pleased as "Punch"; then he felt his cheek and patted his rifle reprovingly as if it were a naughty boy. But he smacked it a moment after, when the leopard appeared again, bounding up the rocks.

I roared with laughter, which of course upset him. Holding the rifle more gingerly than ever, and keeping his face well out of the danger line (he could not possibly have looked along his sights) he fired again, and of course "thump" went the butt against his shoulder. At that he laid the rifle down, sat up, and gazed scornfully at it, jabbering something to me which I, of course, did not understand.

The leopard was now standing on a rock, entirely unaware that he had been fired at, watching the advancing beaters, twitching his tail, and uncertain what to do.

I nodded to the sheikh to watch how it should be done, took a steady aim, and fired.

The animal was two hundred yards away, if an inch, and I did not expect to hit him, but luck was with me. He sprang up, pawing the air, gave two or three huge bounds from rock to rock, then just missed the edge of a boulder, clawed frantically for a moment, and fell on the zigzag path dead.

The wonder and amazement showing in the old man's eyes were the greatest compliment I had ever had paid to my skill. He handed me his rifle and wanted to try mine, taking it with an awed expression as if it were a live thing. Then he noticed the difference in the breech (mine was a Lee-Metford, his a Mauser), and a cunning smile flickered across his face, as if that was the reason why mine had behaved so much better. His eyes simply danced from rock to rock, watching for something to appear, so that he could show me that with the same rifle he was just as good a shot as myself. Presently a wolf or jackal trotted along a narrow ledge of rock below us. He threw up my rifle, pressing the trigger at the same moment, and, as he never even held it tightly, and was sitting up on his haunches, was nearly knocked over by the recoil.

Where the bullet went goodness knows, but his look of abject disappointment when he recovered himself and saw the beast still running along was too comical for words. He gave the rifle back to me, waved his hands as if to say that he would have nothing more to do with such works of Satan, folded his cloak round him, and sat sulkily indifferent. His green turban and crimson cloak made him a quaint figure in the glaring sunlight.

The others fired a few shots (though at what I could not see) and I only hoped that they would not shoot the villagers. Nothing more appeared for us to shoot at, till presently a vulture, coming from nowhere, perched heavily on a rock not fifty yards away--a splendid target for a rifle. He was quite indifferent to our presence.

I made the sheikh lie down--he was as excited as a child again--showed him how to hold the rifle, press it into his shoulder, and look along the sights; the bird watching us all the time, looking like a ragged tramp sitting for his photograph.

When he at last fired, the bullet hit a rock at least ten yards below the bird; but the report frightened it and it flew away.

The old man evidently thought he had wounded it, for he recovered his affability and patted the rifle approvingly, smiling at me.

Whether or no there were as many leopards as we had believed, at any rate we saw no more there, and presently they brought my dead one up to the gap and commenced skinning him. Whilst they were doing this the sheikh led us down to some craggy rocks on the other slope, and a leopard was frightened out of them but broke back through the frightened villagers, and only gave me a long and hopeless shot whilst he was travelling very fast. I am sure the old gentleman was rather pleased that he wasn't the only one who missed.

This was a disappointing day's shooting, but the exercise did us all the good in the world, and we went back to the village quite content. As we drew near the villagers rushed ahead to exchange their spears and sticks for their beloved rifles, came back to meet us, and fired another _feu de joie_.

At a word from Mr. Scarlett the sheikh, seizing a stick, rushed in among them and whacked left and right till they stopped. If he realized the danger it was a very plucky thing to do, because bullets were whizzing all round us.

It was very evident that if the villagers went on expending their precious cartridges as they had this day, they would soon have none left to keep the Bedouins away. This waste of good ammunition so outraged Mr. Scarlett's professional feelings that he actually spent the greater part of the next week teaching them the elements of rifle shooting. I had never seen him so happy for so many days together.

Under the shade of some "nabac" trees close to the well he rigged a tripod and a sand-bag for a rifle to rest on, painted some black bull's-eyes on the side of one of the huts, and every evening showed the villagers how to look along their sights and get them in a line with the bull's-eye.

At the end of the week he rigged a target some way along the beach and invited me to see the results of his training. I do not suppose that there was a single man, woman, or child but had come down to join in the excitement. They were all gathered round the firing point, some eighty or one hundred yards from the target, jabbering noisily--the children not being more childish than the "grown-ups".

Then in absolute silence--even the children held their breath--the first man lay down and aimed very carefully. He fired, and every single soul scampered pell-mell along the beach to the target to see where it had been hit.

In spite of actually seeing most of the bullets striking the sand, they had the most implicit confidence in each other's marksmanship; and I nearly burst myself with laughing, when, after a little while, they began to tire of running to and fro after every shot, and actually gathered round the target itself with their heads as close to the black bull's-eye as they could get them, waiting for the next shot.

Mr. Scarlett managed with difficulty to bring them back, but at this rate the millennium would have arrived by the time each man had fired the three rounds he allowed them. As a matter of fact this exhibition of the result of his training did take three evenings, and I do not remember that any man hit any part of the canvas more than twice. Most of them never hit it at all. 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.

The sheikh refused to fire, evidently not wanting to disgrace himself before the tribe, although his explanation, given to Jaffa, was that it was quite unnecessary--"that if he could hit a vulture at twenty paces, of course he could hit a huge piece of canvas."

Well, even Mr. Scarlett could not be expected to train those poor ignorant fishermen in three or four days. I do believe that they imagined that all that was necessary was to put a cartridge in the rifle, show it the object, and pull the trigger. Allah would look after the bullet. If he did not mean it to hit--well it wouldn't, that was all--and Mr. Scarlett and Jaffa had not sufficient command of their language to make them believe otherwise.

Even after this fatuous display the sheikh confidently told Jaffa that he pitied any poor Bedouins who tried to attack his town--town! mind you; not collection of hovels, as it actually was. His own house and the dome-shaped well were the only two structures you could lean against without risk of falling through the sides. 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.

Every camel except one had been taken away, and that one the sheikh kept for his own use, fitting it out with the gorgeous trappings belonging to Jassim's own riding camel--the one I had killed on the zigzag path. When he was perched, insecurely and uncomfortably, on top of all this splendour, he thought himself the finest fellow in the world, in spite of the fact that the brute could only be induced to move, and that only at a snail's pace, by being pulled along by his halter.

He used to mount it and come along with me when I went shooting along the mountain slopes; but he could never keep up with me, however much the attendant villagers hauled on the head-rope.

One evening, as our fortnight's stay was drawing to a close, we saw from the _Bunder Abbas_ two little dots moving rapidly down from the mouth of the ravine. As they drew nearer we saw that they were two camels, and that a man was riding the first and leading the other. Darkness swallowed them up; but next morning there were three camels kneeling under the shade of the dark-green "nabac" trees alongside the well--the sheikh's and the two strange ones. And whilst we were wondering who the man could have been, a boat paddled off with a letter for Mr. Scarlett. As he caught sight of the handwriting he actually seemed to shrivel; the lines in his face became drawn and haggard, his eyes positively sank into their sockets, and that horrid, frightened, muddy colour spread over his face and down his neck. I knew then who had written the letter--Jassim.

Mr. Scarlett staggered into the cabin and slid the door across. It seemed hours before he opened it--just a crack--and beckoned to me.

"Same thing, sir, only more threatening. Says he will take it off without hurting. That he must have it, and he'll give me still more money."

I had not the patience to try to persuade him to run the slight risk and get rid of the beastly bracelet once and for all, so said nothing. It was he who at last, trembling and sweating with fright, suggested that Jassim should be allowed to come on board and talk things over--"if--if you'll stand by with a revolver, sir, and kill him if he tries to seize it."

It was the only sensible course to take; and, later on, Jassim did come aboard.

What a grand-looking fellow he was in spite of his age, and how he must have hated me and the _Bunder Abbas_ for the part we had played in capturing his caravan! If he did, he showed no sign, salaaming to me as to an equal. I took him up to our little deck, to Mr. Scarlett, and the two began yarning very earnestly, whilst I stood by to see fair play. Jassim was evidently explaining how he proposed to take off the bracelet, and produced two pairs of thin pincers--the same idea that my chum and I had suggested a hundred times.

Some extraordinary excess of courage seemed to come to Mr. Scarlett, and he actually bared his arm, uncovered the bandage, and showed the snake. As it glittered in the sunlight I saw Jassim's eyes flash with something which was not all greed. He slid on his knees, bent down till his lips touched it, holding out his hands and muttering something. Then he rose to his feet, his chest muscles working under his muslin shirt, walked to the rails, and stood for a few moments looking towards the mountains. Mr. Scarlett's arm was stretched across the table, the muscles clenched so hard that they stood out in lumps. He looked at me appealingly, said something to Jassim, who came back to the table, lay half across it to steady himself, and took up those two pincers. Very, very gently he began to insert the jaws of one under a coil of the bracelet, whilst with the other he held fast the head of the snake. I noticed Mr. Scarlett shudder as the pincers touched his skin, and great drops of sweat gathered on his forehead. Then Jassim gently pulled at the coil until it began to come away from the skin. I was looking on, fascinated, my eyes riveted on the head, which, although it was gripped by the other pair of pincers, seemed to be fighting to twist itself backwards and wriggle itself free. At an unlucky moment those pincers slipped off the head, and as the iron dug into Mr. Scarlett's arm and the head flattened itself against the skin, Mr. Scarlett's self-control gave way.

Clenching his free hand over the snake, and seizing the pincers which held the coil, he tore them out of Jassim's hand and jumped away. His chair and the pincers fell with a clatter on the deck, and he stumbled blindly into the cabin, crying to me to send Jassim away, and closing the door behind him.

I turned towards the Arab. He too seemed to have grown older. His face was not pleasant to look at. I managed somehow or other to get rid of him, but there was no peace for me. Mr. Scarlett would not let me leave him all that day nor all through the night. I think he must have been mad. He sat crouched in one corner of the cabin, clutching the snake with his right hand, and moaning for me not to leave him if ever I stirred.

I did everything I could to rouse him--taunted him with cowardice, told him that he was not fit to be called an Englishman, let alone an officer; but he only whimpered like a child, and moaned that it was the Arab blood in him, rocking himself backwards and forwards, cursing himself for ever having allowed Jassim to see the snake.