Part 9

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.

I pulled across in the dinghy.

"Has no one fired at you?" I asked him, seeing that he was within easy range of the shore and even of those high cliffs.

"Not a soul," he told me. "I've not seen a man, woman, or child these five days. Just look at those palm trees!" pointing in the direction where Bungi village lay. "They seem to have changed colour: they're browner than they were; and we cannot see anyone moving about among the sand-hills, not even from the top of the mast. I can't make it out."

I had to tell him the yarn of last night's brilliant little battle with the paraffin tin, and left him and his crew intensely amused.

When I went back to the _Bunder Abbas_ I climbed her mast (much higher it was than the cutter's masts), and through my glasses very carefully searched the flats behind those sand-hills. Not a single living, moving thing did I see, although I watched for quite a quarter of an hour.

I sent Jaffa up to the masthead, and he came down puzzled, wanting me to land him so that he could find out what had happened.

He smiled when I suggested danger. "You wait, sir," he said, and disappeared down below.

My chum began making a signal to me, asking if I could spare any matches, so I forgot about Jaffa until, going back to the cabin, I came across him rigged out as a coast Persian or Baluchi--I didn't know anything of the different tribes, and I don't now--a regular low-caste, unkempt, miserable creature, dirtier than the dirtiest. The only thing remaining of the immaculate Jaffa was his dignified smile.

"You send me shore, sir, when dark comes. I go Bungi; find out things; come back to-morrow night--same time."

Mr. Scarlett told me that no self-respecting Afghan would waste a cartridge or blunt a knife on him in that rig, and that he would run very little risk; so, after sunset, and before the moon rose, I took him ashore myself in the dinghy, feeling rather ashamed to let him disappear behind the sand-hills alone, and promising to be there for him the next night.

At sunrise next morning, just as we were preparing to go to sea for the day, he was seen strolling calmly over the sand-hills, not even deigning to wave his arms to attract attention. One thing was certain: he could not be in any danger.

I stopped heaving in the cable, lowered the dinghy, and pulled ashore myself, jolly glad to get some exercise.

"What's the news?" I called out, as the dinghy took the ground.

"Bungi all gone--houses burnt--men and old women lying all round--killed--no one else there--no young women--no children--only dogs and some goats--no Baluchis--no camels--no Afghans--all nothing."

"What's the meaning of that?" I asked in horror and astonishment.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Afghan take revenge--lose many fighting men--cannot have rifles so take young women and children--take them to mountains--come and see."

I was only too keen to go, and followed him over those same sand-hills from behind which the Afghans had fired at Popple Opstein that horrid Sunday morning. We walked nearly a mile across the sandy wastes--very hot they were to my bare feet--and as we neared the clumps of palm trees which showed where Bungi had stood I saw why they had changed their colour--nearly all had been scorched by the heat from the burning thatched roofs. Their big leaves, red and yellow and black, hung low, mournfully.

The whole village was destroyed and the scene was too horrible to describe, but I saw enough to know that Jaffa was right.

Some half-jackal half-wolf dogs went yelping away when we disturbed them; nothing else lived.

The cruel Afghans had not even been satisfied with this. It was plain that they had driven their herd of camels up and down the patches of cultivated ground until not a trace of them existed. Jaffa explained this, and pointed out the innumerable hoof-marks.

The one well was heaped with dead bodies.

He said, in his quaint way, that that was a proof that "the Afghans had been very angry"!

Then he took me out of the village and showed me the broad track of camel marks leading across the ford towards the mountains.

The sooner the captain of the _Intrepid_ knew of this the better; so back to the dinghy and the _Bunder Abbas_ we went. I signalled across to tell Popple Opstein (we now knew why he had not been fired at) and went to sea, steaming down to Kuh-i-Mubarak. The shamel was still blowing strongly, so Evans was taking shelter in the creek close to the site of the "battle of the paraffin can". As we passed him I shouted out to tell him the news, and that I was going to find out whether Sudab had met the same fate.

I steamed up until the lagoon opened out and the water became too shallow to go farther. Then, landing with Jaffa, Webster, the corporal of marines, and two privates, all armed, we advanced very cautiously inland towards those palm trees under which I had seen the camels many weeks ago. Long before we reached them we knew by the burnt leaves and the sickening smell which pervaded everything that Sudab had met the same fate as Bungi. Even the fishing-boats had been smashed or burnt. We were very glad to get away from it, tramping back through the hot sand, and meeting Evans on his way to explore on his own account. I tried to dissuade him from going, but he was too excited to listen.

"I'm going along to find the _Intrepid_" I shouted after him.

"I'll come along too, directly the shamel has finished," he called back.

In an hour the little "_B.A._" was plunging and burying herself into a head sea, making two knots, over the land. We went at it all the rest of that day and all that night, sighting the _Intrepid_ next morning.

I signalled across my news, and was immediately ordered to close. It was too rough to go alongside. I was ordered to steam to Jask with telegrams for the Admiral and to find out if the telegraph people had any news.

Of course, it was evident to everyone that the Afghans had given up any idea of landing more rifles at either of these two places, so the sooner the Admiral knew of this and the sooner we found out what fresh schemes were under way, the better.

But I was short of coal, and it took nearly two hours to fill up from the _Intrepid_, making fast with a hawser to her stern, and passing small bags from her poop to our bows along a running whip--no light job with such a nasty sea running. Then I was off again for Jask.

I looked at myself in the cracked glass inside our cabin. That scar across my forehead still showed very plainly, and for the life of me I could not help wondering what that little yellow-haired lady would say when she saw it.

*CHAPTER VIII*

*Ugly Rumours*

At daybreak next morning we were off Jask Point, with its square white telegraph buildings and its low sand-hills jutting out into the sea. As the shamel was still blowing hard from the north-west I anchored to the east'ard of the point, close to some rocks, and among a number of dhows sheltering there.

Percy pipeclayed my shoes and helmet, laid out my last clean white suit of uniform, and, having made myself look as smart as I could, I landed close to the old ruined fort (or sheikh's house) and walked up towards the telegraph buildings, meeting the political agent, in pyjamas, smoking a cigar and looking critically at the earth breastwork and the line of wire entanglements.

"Hallo!" he called out cheerily; "they told me you were coming in. You people have made it hot for everybody along the coast, and no mistake!"

He did not want me to give him any news. He had already heard of the capture of one dhow and the destruction of the other, of the terrible losses of the Afghans, of our men being killed, and that Bungi and Sudab had been destroyed. The Afghans had got the idea into their heads that the poor, wretched Persian villagers had given the "show" away, so had taken this ghastly revenge.

"You can't keep anything secret in this country," he said; "the way news travels is simply marvellous. I even heard that an officer had been wounded.

"Was that you?" he asked, looking at my forehead. "I heard that one of you had been seen to fall whilst running along the beach."

I shook my head. "I did not land. It was my chum. Shot through the calf he was. He's all right now."

"Those Afghans came along this way before they went home," he continued; "camped round the new fort, halfway to old Jask; hanged a couple of Persian customs people who lived in it; hanged them from the top of the wall to show their contempt for the Persian Governor; looted it and went away next morning with their camels and the women and children captured in those villages. They had a great number of wounded, those you had wounded--poor wretches!--and threatened to come along and cut our throats later on. A few of them did actually ride up here and fire their rifles--but that was nothing. They put down their losses--they had more than sixty killed--and their ill luck with the gun-running business to the telegraph cable--about right they are too--and would do anything to destroy it and us. Before they went away they cut the land line running along the coast to Karachi, just to give us the trouble of repairing it."

"Aren't you rather nervous?" I asked him.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"We have twenty fellows here who can handle rifles--Eurasians and people like that--besides Borsen and myself. The governor of Jask, too, has fifty or sixty border police, Bedouins, whom the Afghans hate more than they hate us, so we could rely upon them at a pinch!"

"I suppose they will not attempt to run more rifles into Bungi or Sudab?" I said enquiringly.

"No, no! they've had enough of those two places. They'll get news across to the Arabian coast and lie quiet for some months. Come along and have 'chota-hazri'," he said, changing the subject. "You needn't say anything about those Afghans or about them coming along here. My wife knows nothing about it, nor does Miss Borsen; I don't want them to know."

He took me up to his house and sent off the telegrams for the Admiral. The old head boy brought us tea, bread and butter, and fruit, and I quite enjoyed myself, except that the old gentleman was wearing a yellow-silk turban, and every time he came out on the veranda it caught my eye, and I thought he was Miss Borsen.

However, I might have spared myself the trouble of constantly turning my head and expecting to see her, because she was not even living in that house, but with her brother.

Afterwards, on my way down to the beach, I saw her there, a slim little figure on the shore, dressed all in white, with a big white helmet almost covering her yellow hair, looking strangely out of place among a motley crowd of Arabs, Persians, and Zanzibaris, loading and unloading the dhows.

"Her brother ought not to let her come down alone," I thought angrily.

She had a camera with her, and was taking pictures of the natives and their camels. She smiled when she saw me, and every mortal thing I had in my head seemed to go out of it. I couldn't think of any blessed thing to say except that it was a fine morning.

Then she laughed until I grew red and uncomfortable. It was a relief to shout across to the "_B.A._" for the dinghy, but whilst it was coming she made me pose for my photograph.

"I have a snapshot of your little steamboat (boat!--mind you); I must have one of its captain too," she said, as if it was a great compliment to be photographed by her.

If there is one thing I hate more than another it is having my photograph taken. Especially did I hate this, because she arranged me and rearranged me, with Griffiths in the dinghy for a background, and all the time he was grinning at me till I felt the idiot I looked. She never mentioned the scar on my forehead, so I took my helmet off so that she must see it, and then all she said was: "Do put your hat on again, and turn side face; that nasty scratch quite spoils the picture."

Hat! Nasty scratch! Spoils her picture! My word, what irritating things girls are! I'd gone ashore wanting her to see the wound, perhaps to say something nice about it, and hoping that she would treat me, for once, as though I were a man; and she'd made me cover it up in order not to spoil her picture, and made me stand there, like a baby, whilst she took the snapshot.

I felt very irritated, and when she said: "Let me come aboard and photograph that dear Mr. Scarlett," I felt more annoyed than ever. At that time of the morning the _Bunder Abbas_ wasn't clean and tidy, so I answered rather cuttingly that I'd send the gunner ashore to be photographed, and suggested that perhaps she'd better wait until her brother or the political agent's wife could bring her on board some other time.

She smiled again her mocking smile, and, curtsying derisively, watched me clambering clumsily into the dinghy, trying not to wet my feet. With her eyes on me I felt like an elephant trying to get into a canoe, and one of my feet slipped and went into the water. That buckskin shoe was pretty well spoiled.

When Griffiths shoved off--still grinning the brute was--I looked back to salute; but she was already walking away from the beach and did not turn her head.

"She's offended now," I thought. "Serve her jolly well right! Fancy asking herself aboard like that; no English girl would have dreamt of doing such a thing!"

However, I was not really in the least pleased, and Mr. Scarlett soon found out that I was in a pretty bad temper.

Commander Duckworth had ordered me to lie at Jask until replies to his telegrams had been received from the Admiral, so there I had to stay--possibly for days.

The morning went by very slowly. I was in a thoroughly bad temper, and didn't care a "buttered biscuit" whether the six-pounder's recoil springs wanted adjusting or not; and when the lascar first-driver reported that the packing in the high-pressure piston-rod gland was not as tight as it should be, dragging me down below to see it, I cursed him till he salaamed a hundred times a minute to appease me. Moore, too, reported Ellis again for giving him "lip", and went away "with a flea in his ear".

I could not get the idea out of my head that those Afghans would come back and attack the place. Those wire entanglements and earthworks looked such puny things to keep back those fierce chaps who had faced our Maxims and six-pounder near Bungi, that if they really meant business, fifty rifles would not keep them out.

It was such hard luck on those two women. The political agent and Borsen did not count. They'd gone into the job with their eyes open, but the women--well, that was different. They should never have been allowed to come to this desolate, exposed, out-of-the-way spot, on the very edge of civilization.

Those mountains, too, were only twenty miles away; the Afghans could swoop down from them in a night, appear as unexpectedly as a vulture, get between the telegraph station and old Jask, with its fifty Bedouin border police, and cut it off entirely.

I sent for Jaffa and asked him what kind of fellows these border police were. He shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that they were useless, and volunteered to go to Jask and find out, in the bazaars, what news there was. I let him go, and he borrowed a camel from a friend on the beach and rode away inland, his black lambskin fez disappearing among the palms surrounding the ruined sheikh's house.

That afternoon Mr. Scarlett and I enjoyed the luxury of a thoroughly good sleep, lying back in our canvas chairs under the awning outside our cabin until Percy woke us for afternoon tea--tinned milk, bread (stale) buttered with liquid tinned butter, rancid at that.

There was a little sandy cove among the rocks close alongside, so I sent the whole crew ashore there, natives and all. They were soon enjoying themselves to their hearts' content, bathing and skylarking, scrubbing their clothes, drying them on the hot sand, and having a thoroughly good time.

"I'm hanged if I'm going to land at Jask again," I said to myself; but I did go, bawling ashore for someone to bring off the dinghy, and wearing my one respectable flannel suit of "plain clothes"--the very first time I had worn "plain clothes" since joining the _Bunder Abbas_.

I left Mr. Scarlett in charge; he never wanted to go ashore. He said, quite openly, that he was afraid of meeting Jassim, and felt sure that he would do so sooner or later. He was not a man one could argue with. Once he had made up his mind that something gloomy was going to happen he'd stick to it, and when it didn't happen he would be more certain that something worse still would take its place. This silly business about Jassim and the bracelet was, of course, at the bottom of it all. It seemed so absolutely childish for him to imagine that he would meet the man, or that anyone would remember the beastly thing, after all these years, to say nothing of the fact that whatever poison was left in the fangs after they had bitten those two could not possibly have retained its powers, that I lost patience with him.

I landed, but never intended going near the telegraph station, not by a long chalk. I did not want to be treated like a child by Miss Borsen--you bet I did not--so I wandered off to explore the ruins of that sheikh's house or fort among the palm trees.

It was a great square building with a tower at one corner, built up of red sandy bricks, all rounded by age, and the mortar, or whatever it was which bound them together, so friable and crumbling that I could loosen a brick with the end of a stick in no time. An entrance under the tower (from which the door had long since disappeared) led into a courtyard covered with rubbish, and all round it were the remains of dwelling-rooms, storehouses, and stables. Some still had roofs to them. A great high wall with crumbling battlements and platforms seemed to shut out every trace of breeze and shut in every ray of heat. The place was like an enormous oven. I climbed up some rough brick steps leading towards the battlements and base of the tower and had a good view over the surrounding country.

Beyond a few miserable palm trees was the open narrow piece of flat ground forming the neck of the peninsula. It gradually rose towards the telegraph buildings, and about halfway between--something like three hundred yards from where I stood---were the line of wire entanglements and the earth breastwork, stretching right across from the rocks under which the _Bunder Abbas_ was anchored to the shore on the other side, where the shamel was still driving white breakers up the beach with a continuous roar.

Still higher was that strong, loopholed wall surrounding the buildings themselves.

Away to the east'ard ran the telegraph line on its bare steel poles: the line which ran along the coast to Karachi, and which the Afghans had cut only a few days ago. I could follow the line of telegraph posts till they dwindled into "nothing", and felt very thankful that it was not my job to go along that appallingly lonely coast to repair damages.

I suppose I was seen from the telegraph station, for a servant came running down the peninsula, came into the middle of the courtyard, and I'm hanged if I didn't get an invitation to tea with the political agent's wife.

I climbed down and followed him, pretending that I was unwilling to go, and grumbling to myself that if I did meet Miss Borsen we should probably have a row. In half an hour I found myself playing tennis with a borrowed racket and borrowed shoes, which flopped about like canoes on my feet, with Miss Borsen playing opposite me, and beating me time after time with her low drives along the side lines. She seemed to take a positive joy in seeing me falling over my own feet in my attempts to return balls much too good for me. I hate being beaten at any game, especially by a woman, so that did not improve my temper.

"What about your gunner?" the political agent said, when at last I was allowed to "cool off" out of range of that little torturer's eyes. "Doesn't he ever come ashore?"

This made me think of Jassim, the bracelet, and of snake poisons.

"Do you know anything about poisons?" I asked. "How long do you suppose a cobra's poison would remain deadly?"

"In a dead cobra, do you mean? I don't know; but I should not care to keep a dried one without having his poison gland removed."

"No," I said. "If you extracted the poison and kept it in a--a bottle, for instance."

"Not for long, I should imagine," he answered; and then I was fairly startled, for he began to tell me the story of the very cobra bracelet on Mr. Scarlett's arm. I did my best to appear as if this was all quite unknown to me, for fear he should guess that I knew something about it, and drag more information from me than Mr. Scarlett would care I should tell.

"I've never seen it," he went on, quite unsuspiciously; "but an old friend of mine, skipper of a tramp steamer doing a queer business in the Gulf many years ago, saw it once, and told me that he'd never seen such a beautiful piece of workmanship. It will turn up some day at Christie's or at some other curio dealer's in London, I expect, and I'm rather sorry for whoever buys it. If he is known to possess it the news will come along out here, and I don't mind saying that it will disappear again within six months. The present Khan of Khamia, the real owner, is not the wealthy chap some of the former khans were, but he offers a reward every three months in the bazaars of every town on both sides of the Gulf--a reward of thirty thousand rupees--to whoever brings back the 'twin death', as it is called. That's two thousand pounds, and there's not an Arab born yet who wouldn't give his body to earn that, to say nothing about his being certain of Paradise if he helped to restore it to its rightful owners."

I mopped my perspiring face often enough to prevent him noticing how his confirmation of Mr. Scarlett's yarn had stirred me, and was quite glad to be called away to play tennis.

I played worse than ever, and Miss Borsen grew more provokingly successful.

After all my determination never to go near her again, I found myself weakly consenting to stay to dinner. The political agent rigged me out in clothes of his own, and the meal was a most delightful change after "pigging it" on board the "_B.A._" for six weeks on tinned grub, with only the gunner's black-bearded, morose face in front of me. After such fare as we had had this dinner was luxury, but still more of a luxury than the food was the daintily decorated table with its soft candlelight.

It would have been absolutely enjoyable if Miss Borsen had not been there too. She had a most irritating effect on me. Whether she intended it or not she always seemed to be "pulling my leg", and I instinctively "bristled up" and wanted to get the upper hand, and put her in her proper place as a very dainty little lady who should listen, very respectfully, whilst I talked.

I tried to tell them about being carried away to sea in that dhow; but when I came to the part where I climbed along the struggling yard, instead of looking impressed, she merely giggled: "I wish I'd been there; you must have looked like a frog." This put me "off" telling any more yarns, and made me so annoyed with her that I disagreed with everything she said.

Every time I did so she came off best in the argument, in spite of not speaking English very fluently.