Part 16

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 entering the gloomy mouth of the ravine. Mr. Scarlett was just in time to see them too, and some of the terror in his face faded away as they were lost to view. All day he followed me, cringing and apologizing in the most abject manner. Twice he came to me, with his face set and determined, to ask me to take off the snake; but at the sight of it round his bare arm he would alter his mind and say: "Not now, sir; let's wait till Jassim shows his hand again; let's wait till we go back to Muscat!" I lost patience with him completely, and would not speak to him.

The whole crew were, of course, aware that something mysterious had occurred, and Percy guessed that danger threatened his hero. It was quite pathetic to watch him following Mr. Scarlett with his big brown eyes, and looking wistfully sad at not being able to help him.

This affair of Jassim completely upset me, and made me wish that the _Bunder Abbas_ should be sent patrolling again. However monotonous that might be, there would not be the dread of such a scene and such a horrid night as I had just spent with the gunner. Our fortnight at Kalat-al-Abeid had now come to a close, so I went ashore to wish my old friend the sheikh good-bye and to give him a few parting words of advice--through Jaffa. I pointed out to him that if a man and two camels could come riding down from the gap without anyone seeing them, five hundred could do so just as easily and just as unexpectedly. However, he only smiled a superior smile and patted his rifle, so I left him complacently oblivious to his danger, and took the _Bunder Abbas_ through the channel in the cliffs out into the open sea once more. Once out there Mr. Scarlett quickly recovered his composure, but I very much dreaded what would happen should we be detained at Muscat for any length of time.

However, we were in luck. When I went aboard the _Intrepid_ to report myself, and told Commander Duckworth that, so far, the Bedouins had made no attempt to attack the village, and amused him by describing the results of their rifle practice and the grand appearance of the old sheikh on his walking camel, he said: "Well, Martin, you've had a fortnight's rest, and now I have rather an amusing job for you. There's a place called Sur on the chart; it's thirty miles to the south'ard, a deep backwater with two towns--Heija, on the north-east side, belonging to the Beni-Bu-Ali tribe; and, on the west, Shateif-al-Kabira, inhabited by the Beni Janaba. They hate each other like poison, and are always having rows. There is only one decent well for both towns--half-way between them--and the old Sultan has a fort and keeps a garrison there to protect it and keep order. A few months ago he sent a son of his there to command, and the harum-scarum young ass got himself into a mess, enraged both tribes so much that they've joined forces--for the first time on record--and surrounded his precious fort. As a personal favour the Sultan has asked the political agent if he will get him out of this trouble; so there's your job, and off you go as soon as you're ready. The Sultan is sending off a few thousand rupees, and if you find these won't do the trick, and the tribes are bent on getting the young scamp's blood, just bring him back with you. The _Bunder Abbas_ can get quite close in to the fort, and you ought to have no trouble. At any rate, fix things up as best you can."

"Thank you very much, sir!" I said, and asked him if there was any more news from Jask.

He shook his head. "The political agent is always hearing rumours of trouble--nothing more. They haven't sent those ladies away. I wish they would."

So did I.

I stayed on board to lunch with Popple Opstein. He was beginning to find lying off Muscat rather dull work after the exciting times we had had, and almost wished we had not captured all those arms. "The gun-running business has been knocked on the head for the next few months or so," he told me, "and things are as dull as ditch-water."

The _Bunder Abbas_ had taken nearly all her coal, water, and provisions on board by the time I went back to her, and I found Mr. Scarlett in another of his nervous saturnine fits. Moore told me he had shut himself in his cabin ever since the coal lighter had come alongside. When he came out to speak to me he was so nervous and shaky that I was more than ever anxious about him.

To come back from the noisy, cheery mess aboard the _Intrepid_ to be cooped up alone with him again made me feel extremely miserable. I was beginning to dread Percy announcing a meal. The food, generally speaking, was horrid--horrid to look at and horrid to eat. The gunner would sit on one side of the table, I on the other, and we often never spoke a single word all through a single meal except to curse Percy or the cook or the flies or the sun blazing through the awning. At least once every day the wretched cook would be sent for by the gunner and slanged in Hindustani or Urdu or some such queer dialect or other until he slunk down the ladder trembling with fear. Often to avoid a row with the gunner I would go away and leave him to finish his meal by himself. Latterly, when I saw Percy laying the cloth for "food", I would find myself a job of work to do, hoping that Mr. Scarlett would finish before I came. But that was no good; he would always wait for me.

I was, in fact, heartily sick of him. I don't mean to say that I actually disliked him, but we had nothing whatever in common once we had told each other all the yarns we knew and when the subject of gun-running was worn threadbare.

It suddenly occurred to me to ask old Popple Opstein to get leave and come along with me for this trip to Sur, so I signalled across, and presently back came a semaphore: "Right oh! leave granted. What time do you sail?"

I was not going until the morning; it was no good spending a night at sea along that coast. So I signalled: "Daybreak--delighted."

He made me dine with him; we had a great sing-song on the poop, with the ship's company chipping in, and after it he came back with me, bringing his bedding and other gear.

The night was as hot as Hades, without a breath of air, but the old "_B.A._" standing out in the moonlight was a different ship with Popple Opstein climbing up her side and with him to yarn to before we lay down on the little deck outside the cabin (inside which Mr. Scarlett had again shut himself) and tried to sleep.

Not much sleep did we get, so much had we to talk about, and so pleasant it was for me to have someone to talk to.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*Rounding up a Prodigal*

At daybreak next morning our little steam-winch ran the anchor out of the water merrily, and off we went for Sur, its two towns of irrepressible Arabs, and the young scamp of a Sultan's son who had caused all this bobbery. Old Popple Opstein, in his pyjamas, lay back in my easy chair, smoking his noisy pipe--the deck all round him soon strewn with half-burnt matches--and looking happy and contented to sit there and watch me take the _Bunder Abbas_ out of harbour. Mr. Scarlett, his old self once more, was in the bows under the awning, securing the anchor, and I'm almost certain he was whistling a cheerful tune; the crew, both black and white, were skylarking and singing snatches of song whilst they scrubbed and holystoned the decks; Percy's big, shy eyes were dancing with fun as he brought three cups of tea up the ladder to our little deck; and even the despondent cook seemed to have made a better brew than usual that morning.

"Here's luck to the '_B.A._'!" Popple Opstein cried, as he drank his, and the _Bunder Abbas_, not intending to be left out of the lightheartedness and gaiety he had brought with him, dipped her bows into the swell and gambolled and sported like a porpoise.

It was a very joyous morning, and though the monsoon was in a rather too playful mood we made five knots against it as we steamed along that grand coast line. By noon Jebel-al-Khamis, towering into the burning vault of blue sky, showed that we were abreast the opening in the cliffs which led to Sur, so over went the helm and inshore we steamed, with the swell catching us up, sliding under us, and hastening ahead to crash itself to a foaming dazzling death. A cairn perched on the top of the naked cliff, and a vast jumble of rocks, piled on each other like a heap of enormous broken bricks, at its foot, marked the entrance to the actual channel. In half an hour we were inside just such another ravine as the one leading to Kalat-al-Abeid, only the walls were not so high nor so bold. The roar of the breaking swell outside died away: we twisted this way and that, and saw by the chart that in a few minutes we should turn another corner, enter the open backwater, and see right ahead of us the fort which guarded the well, and the two towns whose people were trying to "do for" the Sultan's son, or the "Prodigal Son" as my chum called him.

By this time we were both in uniform--if one could call it uniform: white topee helmets, white cotton shirts with the sleeves rolled up, white cotton "shorts", bare legs, and canvas shoes. We only had to put our neck through our revolver lanyards and buckle our revolver belts round our waists to be ready to land and demand the Prodigal Son; quite ready even though ten thousand Arabs wanted to keep him. The chart showed three fathoms of water quite close to the fort which he was so gallantly, or otherwise, holding out against such odds; the little "_B.A._" only drew eight feet at the stern, so we could run up almost alongside, and the one thousand or ten thousand Arabs would, we feared, soon alter their minds when they heard the chink of those dollars. Both of us sincerely hoped that they would not and would give the six-pounder and the Maxims a chance of arguing it out with them. We were doing this for the Sultan as a personal favour, so knew he wouldn't mind how many of his faithful (?) subjects went to Paradise during the argument. We certainly did not.

"My dear old chap," Popple Opstein said, smacking me on the back as this thought struck him, "there'll be no red-tape business about this little job; none of your beastly waiting for them to fire at you first, no worry about 'papers' and nationality or rot like that. Just go straight in, see how things are; if he's in a tight place, and they won't take the old man Sultan's bag of dollars, pull the Prodigal Son out by the scruff of his neck--and there we are. We ought to have fine sport."

Presently we ran clear of the channel into a big backwater or "khor", not so big as that at Kalat-al-Abeid but longer and more narrow, its shores thick with scraggy, dried-up-looking mangrove trees, with here and there a clump of darker almond trees, the everlasting bare hills rising behind everything.

"There's the fort," we both cried, pointing to the top end, where we could see a big, square, battlemented building about two miles away, standing alone on a waste of sand in which even the mangrove trees apparently could not exist, for they stopped short perhaps five hundred yards from either side of the fort. Almost at the same moment we spotted the two rebellious towns--one on each shore--nestling under the trees. Through my telescope I saw that the red flag of Muscat drooped down from the flagstaff over the fort, so we had not arrived too late! Not another sign of life appeared, no figures were moving about behind the parapet of the fort, and not a single soul showed on the open sandy space. As we drew nearer, a dark patch close to the edge of the sea turned out to be a couple of trees half-concealing a dome-shaped well--the well for the guarding of which the fort had been built.

It all seemed so peaceable that we were rather disappointed, until suddenly that open space round the fort simply swarmed with crawling figures, hundreds of little white "puff-balls" of smoke seemed to grow out of the sand, and great spurts of white smoke leapt out from the battlemented parapet of the fort itself. The dull booms coming across the water told us that the Prodigal Son must be firing his old muzzle-loading cannon. To judge by the amount of firing, he was having a very bad time of it indeed.

"Just in time, Martin, old chap," Popple Opstein chuckled, his face becoming violet in his excitement. "Shove the '_B.A._' ahead and we'll chip in."

Mr. Scarlett, sucking in his breath and looking unhappy, wondered why they were fighting in the heat of midday.

"They never do so," he said. "It must be a very fierce attack."

But I was not going to shove on any faster. To begin with, I had to go carefully, because there were many shoal patches marked on the chart; and, to end with, I couldn't go faster, because the packing in the high-pressure piston-rod gland had opened out on the way down. The lascar engine-drivers were already terrified at the escape of noisy steam, and if we shoved her on faster the packing might blow out altogether.

So I just sent along two or three six-pounder shells--or, to be accurate, four--two among the people on one side, two among the people on the other.

"The white sea-lord metes out even justice," old Popple Opstein chuckled (of course I had told him the yarn about the "white sea-lord jolly well wanting to shoot his own leopards ").

The little shells burst beautifully, and their result was magical. The dark crawling figures making "puff-balls" tore back to the cover of some huts at the edge of the mangroves, whilst the defenders of the fort gave it them hot with the little cannon.

As we anchored within fifty yards of the shore--just abreast the big fort with its red flag, and the white-domed well close to it--the big door at one corner was flung open, and out streamed a crowd of men laden with water-skins and chatties--any mortal thing which would hold water--hurrying to the well. They began working like the very dickens to fill them, and staggered back again into the fort with anxious glances to right and left, to see whether the tribesmen were going to attack again.

"We were just in time, old sonny," my chum grinned; "they were short of water."

"That's why they were fighting at noonday," Mr. Scarlett explained. "It must have been a very close thing."

I prepared to land. Where I went my chum went too. We both buckled on our revolver belts, and I saw to it that he put his lanyard round his neck this time. Jaffa, clean as a new pin, standing at the side waiting for Griffiths to bring the dinghy alongside, was making certain that the magazine of his Mauser pistol was full. Mr. Scarlett remained in charge; Moore had to "stand by" with the six-pounder, and Webster and his marines manned one Maxim, Ellis and his bluejackets the other. With the knowledge that they would shoot straight and quickly there was no danger in landing, and I knew that no Arab would play the fool with us.

It was my chum who suggested that we should lay out a kedge-anchor astern, in order to bring the "_B.A._"'s broadside to bear. This delayed us for a quarter of an hour, but at last we were ready, and with a white ensign flying in the stern of the dinghy--almost as big as herself--we landed on the beach: Popple Opstein, Jaffa, and myself. My aunt, but it was hot! The sand seemed to burn through our rope-soled shoes as we tramped up towards the well and its two weeping "nabac" trees. Footmarks in thousands were all round it; one deep trail leading to the door of the fort, two more leading away along the sand to the towns on either side.

As we left the shade of the trees the door at the angle of the fort opened, and out came four Arabs, armed to the teeth with rifles, belts of cartridges, swords, and huge curved daggers. They advanced to meet us, salaaming a hundred times. The leader fixed his dark eyes on me whilst he jabbered away to Jaffa.

Jaffa translated, to the effect--more or less--that, thanks to the all-seeing benevolent kindness of the Prophet, whose name be praised, who always shielded the true believer and scattered his enemies just as they were cock-sure of having won in an innings with runs to spare--or words to that effect--we, rulers of the sea and sons of the Great White Queen, had unexpectedly turned up and scored the winning goal just as time was called. He implored us to demean our noble selves sufficiently to take some abominable refreshment (he was pretty well right in that) under the wretched roof of his cowardly and entirely despicable master, the mighty fighter, the heaven-born leader of men, born with a double-edged sword in his hand, and destined to bring joy to the heart of his noble father, the Sultan of Muscat, "to whom all we pigs and nobodies own eternal allegiance--Mohammed be praised!" There was another long rigmarole to explain why the Prodigal Son could not come to receive us, but I gathered that he had been wounded in this recent attack, and was having his wounds dressed even now.

"Right oh! We'll go along with them," I told Jaffa, cutting him short. "Tell him that we didn't come here by chance, but at the request of the Sultan."

The sheikh, or whoever he was, received this news with astonishment.

"He say they all lay down lives for Sultan--love Sultan very much," Jaffa interpreted to me with impassive face.

Off we went, and, my word, it was a most unpleasant place! The foot of the walls of the fort was piled with all kinds of rubbish--cast-off blood-stained clothes, bones, skeletons of dogs and camels, all the filth one could imagine--and the stench was horrid.

Popple Opstein pointed out any number of bullet marks in the crumbling bricks of the forts, and we made grimaces as we realized what a very tough defence they must have been making, and how excessively uncomfortable they must be.

Two solemn, weary-looking Arabs--one bandaged about the head--opened a little door in the big one, which had been closed again, and we passed into a large passage, which opened out into the court-yard in the centre of the fort. Stone benches on either side of this passage-way were thronged with more tired-looking soldiers, most of them asleep, and very many of them evidently wounded. In the court-yard itself the heat and the smell were awful. Thirty or forty lean horses were tethered in the open, a dozen camels knelt stolidly in the shade which a mat-screen gave them, whilst hundreds of goats and sheep wandered about feeding on whatever garbage lay about. As we passed across, and tried to avoid falling over sheep, being kicked by a horse, or bitten by a camel, a score or more battle-stained Arabs raised themselves wearily from the ground and leant on their rifles.

"A beastly place to be cooped up in," Popple Opstein whispered, as we followed our guides through an archway into a delightfully-cool chamber or hall, and up some winding stone steps to the upper story. This was evidently where the officials and officers lived--much more handsomely decorated it was, with carvings, and lattice-work of stone, wood, and iron, elegant pillars and arches forming a delightfully-cool, creeper-covered balcony above the four sides of the crowded court-yard, from which, however, the smell and the noise of all the animals below were still too unpleasantly evident. Fifty or more soldiers were lying on this balcony in every attitude of weary sleep, and as we hurried along it after our silent guides we could catch a glimpse of the battlements on the flat roof above our heads, and a motionless sentry standing out vividly against the sky, watching to give the alarm did the tribesmen make another attack.

We passed several elegant door-ways screened with matting, and then, at last, a richly-embroidered curtain was drawn aside and we were ushered into a long, darkened room, the wooden floors carpeted with splendid rugs, on which six or seven magnificently-dressed Arabs were seated. They welcomed us gravely. Most of them appeared to have been wounded: one had his arm in a sling, another had his leg swathed in white cotton and tried to repress a groan when he moved. We, in our very rudimentary costume, must have made a comical appearance in the midst of all this magnificence; but we didn't care "tuppence" about that. On a raised, rug-carpeted platform a very handsome Arab stood erect, his left arm bound closely to his chest under his white linen shirt, his right hand grasping the hilt of a gold-mounted dagger stuck in his belt. Salaaming gravely, he stepped down to meet us with outstretched hand, drew us to the platform, and made us sit beside him.

We almost fell over ourselves when he burst out with: "It's awfully good of you fellows to come along--awfully lucky, too; just when things were queer. Another hour of it and my chaps would have burst out to get water or die--you saw them scurrying out. I can never be too grateful. You are on your way to Muscat, I suppose; if you can see my father, the Sultan, or get hold of the Chief Wazir, tell him you have saved his son's honour. He will do anything for you, I know."

"Oh no!" I said, when I'd recovered from my astonishment at hearing him speak such English. "We've come straight from Muscat, at the Sultan's special request, to get news of you."

I did not like telling him that we'd come to rescue him.

"Really!" he said, his eyes glowing. "We are all the more in your debt. But when you return, do not say anything about this," he touched his left arm; "it's nothing. A bullet splintered the bone. It will do quite well. My father will only worry if he knows of it. Have some coffee and cigarettes," he continued, as a Zanzibar slave brought round a tray. "Now you've given me the chance of stocking my fort with water we can hold out until these tribes leave us alone to fight each other. They're certain to do that soon. I need hardly tell you that we are all very grateful indeed."

He turned and spoke to the others, who answered with a murmur of respectful and dignified acquiescence.

Coffee was brought in tiny little enamelled metal cups, more cigarettes were handed round, and the Prodigal Son kept us busy answering questions about the latest news from Muscat; and, when he discovered that we were practically ignorant of anything that was happening there, asked questions about European politics, of which neither Popple Opstein nor I knew much more. It seemed really most extraordinary that though he was wounded and surrounded by the tribesmen from those two towns, thirsting to eat up him and his handful of soldiers, he should interest himself in events so far away. To show him that I was not altogether ignorant of Court "goings on", I told him of the two sums of money which the Sultan had already tried to send him overland.

"The Sultan is a good father; he deserves a better son," he said with such engaging frankness that he raised himself tremendously in our estimation. To cap all, I told him that he had sent five thousand rupees with us, not daring to trust them by land again, and that if he thought they would be of any use in pacifying the two tribes, I would send them ashore directly we returned to the _Bunder Abbas_.

"If not," I added with a great show of importance, "I have orders to take you back to Muscat."

He smiled, such a jovial frank smile that I could not wonder why he was such a favourite with his father.