Chapter I: Part 1

Gunboat and
Gun-runner

A Tale of the Persian Gulf

BY

SURGEON REAR-ADMIRAL T. T. JEANS,
C.M.G., R.N.

Author of "John Graham, Sub-Lieutenant R.N."
"On Foreign Service" "Ford of H.M.S. Vigilant"
&c.

_Illustrated by C. M. Padday_

BLACKIE & SON LIMITED
LONDON AND GLASGOW
1914

BLACKIE & SON LIMITED
_50 Old Bailey, London_
_17 Stanhope Street, Glasgow_

BLACKIE & SON (INDIA) LIMITED
_Warwick House, Fort Street, Bombay_

BLACKIE & SON (CANADA) LIMITED
_1118 Bay Street, Toronto_

_Printed in Great Britain by Blackie & Son, Ltd., Glasgow_

*Preface*

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 Persian Gulf and adjacent waters, and caravans of camels convey them to their destination through the mountain passes of Baluchistan.

Ships of the Royal Navy and the Royal Indian Marine, armed launches manned by officers and men lent from the Royal Navy, and ships' armed cutters cruise and patrol these waters from one year's end to another, overhauling dhows, landing men to search villages suspected of concealing arms, and ceaselessly striving to put a stop to this trade.

My story describes the conditions of service in one of these armed launches, and is based on actual occurrences which took place some ten years ago. Most of the incidents have been described to me by participators in them. The proof-sheets have also been revised by officers who have themselves taken part, during more recent years, in the suppression of "gun-running".

As a result, the story is, I trust, free from errors and improbabilities.

T. T. JEANS,

Surgeon Rear-Admiral, Royal Navy.

*Contents*

CHAP.

I. A Splendid Appointment
II. The Story of the "Twin Death"
III. Skipper of the "Bunder Abbas"
IV. Adrift in a Dhow
V. My First Capture
VI. The Edge of Civilization
VII. The Battle of the Paraffin Can
VIII. Ugly Rumours
IX. Trapping a Caravan
X. The Fight in the "Coffee-Cup"
XI. The Cobra Bracelet Again
XII. Mr. Scarlett Bares his Arm
XIII. Rounding up a Prodigal
XIV. We Deal with Jassim
XV. A Tragedy of the Telegraph
XVI. The Siege of Jask
XVII. Jassim Takes his Revenge
XVIII. To the Rescue
XIX. The Grey-Eyed Lady Decides

*Illustrations*

The "Bunder Abbas" comes upon a large Arab dhow in the very act of landing guns . . . _Frontispiece_

The four of us tried to haul the yard and sail on board, hauling for all we were worth

Looking through my loophole I saw a tall, fine-looking Arab peering into the chasm beneath

Bowing in the most dignified manner to the prodigal son and ourselves, they squatted in a circle round us

*GUNBOAT AND GUN-RUNNER*

*CHAPTER I*

*A Splendid Appointment*

At the time this yarn commences I was a lieutenant of four years' seniority, a "watchkeeper" aboard H.M.S. _Russell_, longing earnestly to see the world, but with no probable prospect of my desires being realized.

I had been serving in the Channel and Atlantic Fleets, continuously, for seven years--appointed from one ship to another, from a battleship to a destroyer, from a destroyer to an armoured cruiser, and from her to the _Russell_. In fact, I began to wonder whether my whole naval career was to be spent plodding round the British Islands, and the limits of my world were to be bounded by an occasional view of the coast of France, and a still more infrequent sight of the rugged headlands of Spain.

Then, by a lucky stroke of good fortune, my chance did at last come.

I happened to be on forty-eight hours' leave in London, and at my club, the "Junior", met a captain under whom I had served a year or two previously.

We talked about our former ship, and I told him how tired I was of sticking at home, and how anxious I was to see some foreign service. He jerked out, in the abrupt way he had: "Why, man, clear out!--get along to the Admiralty!--full speed!--off you go! I was talking to the Second Sea Lord not half an hour ago, and he'd just heard that a lieutenant was wanted for the Persian Gulf. Give him my card. Why, bless my rags, I haven't one!" and he scribbled his name on the back of a club envelope and hustled me out.

I found myself jumping into a hansom (there were no taxis available then as now) and driving to the Admiralty before I fully realized what I was about to do.

"No, the Second Sea Lord won't see nobody," a porter at the Admiralty told me; adding, mysteriously: "The First Lord 'as just a-been an' sent for him. You 'ad better see Mr. Copeland, 'is sec-re-tary."

I always feel overawed at the Admiralty--merely being in the same building with their "Lordships" is enough to overawe any humble lieutenant--so I meekly followed the porter into a waiting-room, pacing up and down restlessly till he came back again, beckoning me with a confidential air. "'E'll see you, if you step this way. 'E is in a middling good temper this morning--ain't 'ad many to worry 'im."

My interview with Mr. Copeland was short and sharp.

"What do you want?" he said curtly, more or less as if I was a pickpocket or a beggar asking for a penny.

"I hear there's a vacancy for a lieutenant in the Persian Gulf. I'm Martin--Paul Reginald Martin of the _Russell_, four years' seniority next May--and I want to go there. My late captain gave me this for the Second Sea Lord;" and I handed him the envelope with the pencil note: "Give this chap the job if you can", and his signature.

The secretary glanced at it, threw it on his desk, and looked at me suspiciously. "Yes, yes! I don't know how he came to hear of it. Collingwood, of the _Bunder Abbas_, has died of sunstroke. Quite right! quite right! I'll put your name down for her--if you wish."

"Please!" I said.

"Do you know what the job is?" he asked, as if, did I know, I should not be so keen to go.

"Not in the least," I answered; "and I don't mind, so long as I can get abroad and out of the Channel Fleet."

He smiled unpleasantly. "It's a patrolling job, and a lonely one."

He said this as though--officially--he ought to warn me, though--individually--he didn't care a button whether I went or not.

That gave me some idea of the job.

"The gunner's gone mad too. We'll have to send another out, I suppose--confound him!"

I could not help smiling at the idea of a mad gunner being left there.

He cut my smile short with a sharp: "I'll put your name down. Good morning!"

I backed clumsily out of the door.

"What's the _Bunder Abbas_?" I asked the porter outside.

"The _Bunder Habbas_!" he corrected me, repeating the name to give himself time to think.

"Something in the Persian Gulf?" I said, to aid his memory.

But he didn't know--none of the other porters knew; so he rang up some mysterious individual on the telephone.

"There's a gen'l'man 'ere wants to know what the _Bunder Habbas_ his. _Habbas--Bunder Habbas_--hout in the Persian Gulf."

He had a slight argument about pronunciation and spelling, and then turned to me triumphantly. "She's a harmed launch, sir, that's what she his, a-looking out to stop them Arabs a-gun-running," and hastened to answer a bell, pocketing the half-crown I gave him.

I hurried away down the corridor, and was so excited that I did not notice my former captain until he tapped me on the shoulder.

"I've just come round," he said; "will see the Second Sea Lord myself--put in a word for you--thought I might fix it up at once--good luck to you if you get it."

"Thank you very much, sir," I said gratefully, and hurried out into Whitehall.

"Armed launch! Skipper of an armed launch--Collingwood dead of sunstroke--gunner gone mad," and I grinned to myself and walked along like a bird.

"Fancy getting away from all this!" I thought, and looked round at the babel of traffic and the throngs of people. Fancy getting away from the Channel Fleet for a time! I thought of my ship, the _Russell_, lying under Portland Bill, with other huge grey monsters; and thought of the tense readiness for war aboard them, and the strain of it, month after month. In a few weeks, with luck, I might be three thousand miles away, patrolling the Persian Gulf--free as air--with a good launch under me, and probably a 4.7-inch gun in her bows, ready to tackle any gun-running Arab dhow which came along. Prize money, too--there'd be a chance of that as well.

It was grand.

Collingwood, poor old Collingwood--I'd known him in the _Britannia_--dead of sunstroke, and the gunner gone mad! That didn't sound as if the job was exactly a bed of roses. But Copeland had put my name down--the die was cast; I didn't mind if the whole crew had died of sunstroke and plague combined. I rather hoped that they had, and that any other chap who applied for the _Bunder Abbas_ would--well--feel a little less keen about her when he heard.

I didn't notice the rain or the mud splashed on my trousers from the roadway. I could have whooped with joy.

All these silly clothes my tailor bothered to make tight here or loose there, to show more or show less of the waistcoat, as silly fashion changed--why, with luck, in a month's time, a pair of flannel trousers and a cricket shirt would be all the wardrobe I should want. I'd be my own skipper, with a dozen blue-jackets, and a stout launch under us; that 4.7-inch gun--or perhaps it would be a twelve-pounder--shining in the bows under the awning. Wouldn't it shine, too! There'd be nothing much else to do but burnish it, and burnished it should be till I could shave by it.

All that afternoon I waited patiently at the club for the evening paper, and directly the waiter brought it into the smoking-room I pounced on it.

Sure enough, under "Naval Appointments" was my name--"Paul R. Martin appointed _Intrepid_" (she was one of the cruisers on the East Indies Station) "for armed launch _Bunder Abbas_".

I gave a shout of delight, which rather startled some old fogies there; and a man sitting near--a naval doctor whom I knew slightly--laughed at me, wanting to know what was the matter.

I pointed out the appointment.

"Look at that! Isn't that grand?"

"_Bunder Abbas_," he said, as we lay back in the luxurious chairs--they really did feel comfortable now that I was going out to the waste parts of the world. "That was Collingwood's launch. What's become of him?"

"Died of sunstroke," I told him.

"Really, now?" the doctor went on; "he's only been there three months. I knew him slightly; he relieved a chap who had beri-beri, or one of those funny tropical diseases--sometimes you swell, sometimes you do the other thing. I forget now which he did before he was invalided home. I did hear; it was quite interesting. So you're off there? Well, good luck! Are the 'footer' results in that paper?

"D'you want any tips for the Persian Gulf?" he asked presently, when he had finished reading the football news. "Whatever you like to eat, don't eat it. (You can't get it, so you needn't bother to remember that tip.) And if you want gin or whisky, or any comforts like that, chuck them over the side: they may kill the sharks; they won't kill you. In fact, my dear chap, whatever you like doing and want to do, there's only one tip to remember if you want to keep fit--don't do it!

"If you get beri-beri," he called after me as I fled, "you might let me know whether you swell or do the other thing."

I packed my bag, not in the least disturbed by anyone's gloomy remarks, and went back to my ship at Portland.

My orders came next day.

I was to take passage in a P. & O. mail steamer, sailing in twelve days' time (a luxury I never expected), and join the _Intrepid_ at Aden, where further orders would be given me.

A fortnight later I was tumbling and churning through the "Bay" in the P. & O. _Java_, as happy as a king, without a care in the world.

A lieutenant named Anderson shared my cabin. He was going out to join the _Intrepid_ as one of her watchkeepers. As, but for him, I should probably never have survived to write the account of what happened to us later on, I will give an idea of what kind of chap he was. First of all, he was known to his chums as "The Baron" or as "Baron Popple Opstein", though why these nicknames ever stuck to him I don't know.

He was a great lumbering, clumsy giant, with a long red face, a big hooked nose, and a large mouth, always smiling, and showing the whitest set of teeth I have ever seen. He had laughing blue eyes, which saw everything except people's faults, and a mop of yellow, silk-coloured hair which grew down his great red forehead in a quaint triangular patch pointing to his nose. His whole face beamed good humour and kindliness; he was the simplest, happiest soul alive--one of those men with whom it is good to live. He never did much talking, and never wanted anyone to talk much to him; but would sit smoking his old, disgracefully charred pipe, and beam by the hour, just happy to have the dancing sea under his feet and the fresh salt air in his lungs. He really was a splendid-looking fellow, but by some odd twist in his mind imagined he was ugly. This made him rather retiring and bashful. He would sooner try to stop a mad dog than be introduced to a lady. "My dear old chap," he would say, if I wanted to introduce him to one of the lady passengers, "what on earth can I talk to her about? She doesn't want to hear about scrubbing hammocks, or the gunnery manual. I can't think of anything else to talk about."

The result was that we both kept pretty much to ourselves, and amused ourselves watching the others.

There was a major on board going out to India--a fussy, conceited individual who imagined that all the ladies must be head over heels in love with him. He tried to patronize us, but we gave him the cold shoulder, and so did a little pale-faced, rather nice-looking girl about twenty-two, with hair the very same shade as the Baron's. She was not English--I could tell that by the way she talked--and she kept almost entirely to herself. I never spoke to her during the voyage, but once I overheard her snub the major in broken English, in the most deliberate, delightful manner, and as he went away, with a silly expression on his face, our eyes met. There was such an irresistibly humorous twinkle in hers that I smiled too--I really could not help it. At that her smile died away, as if ashamed of itself, her pale face flushed, and I followed the major, feeling like a naughty boy who had been caught prying.

At Port Said we picked up Mr. Thomas Scarlett--Gunner, R.N.--serving in the _Jason_, which was doing guardship there.

I had seen his appointment to the _Bunder Abbas_ in the newspapers, and, as we should have to live together for the next two years, I was anxious to know what manner of man he was.

He certainly looked a queer chap, tall and thin, with stooping shoulders, bushy black eyebrows meeting across his forehead, two piercing black eyes deeply sunk beneath them, a beaked nose over very thin tight lips, and the blackest of hair, moustache, and pointed beard. He looked very much like a vulture, with his long thin neck stretching out from a low collar, much too large for him. When he talked, the words tumbled out, one after the other, so quickly that, until one became used to him, it was difficult to understand what he said.

We soon found out that he had been in the Persian Gulf many times in the course of the last few years, so Baron Popple Opstein and I used to take him along to our special corner on deck, and ask him questions. He gave us the impression that he did not wish to go out there again, and whenever he talked of the Persian Gulf and of his former experiences there he seemed nervous and very ill at ease. But, once we made him talk, his stories of pirates, pearl-fishers, slavers, and gun-runners were as absorbing as one could wish. Old Popple Opstein's face would grow purple with excitement. Mr. Scarlett, too, would often work himself into a great pitch of vehemence as he told some especially thrilling yarn.

"You might be an Arab yourself," I said one night, when he had brought a story to a climax, leaving us breathless and fascinated with his glowing, fiery description.

"I am almost, sir," he said. "My father was the constable of the Residency at Bushire, and my mother was half-Arab."

That explained his dark complexion, and why, in the middle of a yarn, he would often slide off his chair and sit Moorish fashion--cross-legged. He could always talk more easily in that attitude.

Ever since he had joined the Navy he had served, off and on, in the East, his knowledge of all the languages and different dialects of those parts, picked up when he was a boy, being so useful.

One night, four days out from Suez, we were making him tell us all he knew about gun-running. It was very warm, damp, and unpleasant, so he took off his coat. In doing so he happened to pull the shirtsleeve of his left arm above his elbow. By the light of a lantern overhead we saw something glittering round his arm. My chum peered forward to look at it, but the gunner hastily pulled his sleeve down.

"What the dickens is that?" we both asked.

First glancing fore and aft, to see that no one was near, he very reluctantly pulled up his sleeve.

He held his arm so that the lantern light fell upon it, and we saw that the thing round his arm was a small snake, marvellously enamelled--a cobra it was. The joints, even each separate scale, seemed flexible, and as he worked his muscles underneath it the snake seemed to cling more tightly to his skin, in the most horribly realistic fashion. Two greenish-tinged opal eyes blinked at us as the light overhead flickered in them.

The Baron leant forward to touch it, but Mr. Scarlett, with a sudden look of horror, shot out his right hand and clutched the Baron's hand so violently that he cried out.

"Don't touch it, sir! For God's sake, don't touch it. There's poison enough in that thing to kill a dozen men!" he gasped fiercely.

"What is it--what do you mean? Tell us!" we cried.

Some passengers coming along the deck, he instantly covered it with his sleeve.

"I generally wear a bandage over it," he said nervously. "The night was so hot that I took it off."

"Well, tell us about it," we urged him. "Where did you get it?"

"Jassim gave it to me," Mr. Scarlett answered, his black eyes burning strangely as he looked round to see that no one could overhear him. "I'll tell you when and how that snake came here. It's a long story--and a sad one. When you have heard it you will know why I do not want to go back to the Persian Gulf. But, for God's sake, sirs, don't ever mention it to a soul!"

We promised--we would have promised anything to learn its story.

*CHAPTER II*

*The Story of the "Twin Death"*

"It was nearly thirty years ago when I first saw that bracelet," Mr. Scarlett began in a strained voice. "I was only a boy then. It was brought to my father's house, at Bushire, by a Banyan jeweller--a friend of his--who showed it to him as one of the most marvellous and curious pieces of workmanship in the East. I remember how frightened I was to hear the stories he told of it, and to see them examining it.

"When the jeweller had gone, my father, who knew its history, told me that, when it was pulled off the arm which wore it, it would writhe and strike with the poisoned fangs in its head, and kill both the wearer and the person who tore it off.

"There is an Arab song, nearly two hundred years old, which sings of it. The song is about the woman who first wore it. She was the favourite wife of a murdered Sultan of Khamia, and fell alive into the hands of his Persian conqueror. He wanted to marry her because she was so beautiful, and she dared him, if he would win her, to tear the bracelet off her arm--dared him in front of his Court--and he was so mad with love that he did so, although he knew what would happen. The snake struck them both, and they died. In that Arab song she is supposed to sing several verses after the fangs struck her, but," Mr. Scarlett's voice trembled hoarsely, "I know that she had not time."

"You don't mean to tell us that this is the same one?" the Baron asked breathlessly.

"It is, sir. I wish it wasn't."

"But how did you get it?" he asked again.

"Let the gunner spin his yarn," I told him impatiently.

"Well," he went on, "it has always been worn by the chief wife of the Sultan of Khamia. It is her privilege to be the only wife who follows her husband at his death. She had to kill herself by tearing it off her own arm, and if her courage failed her a slave stood by to do it, and the two would die. The slave was not likely to fail her, for to die by 'the twin death' was supposed to be a sure way of attaining Paradise, and not many slaves ever thought that they would have the chance to get there.

"Some of this my father told me, and the rest, and many other things besides, I learnt afterwards from the Arabs up and down the coast.

"I saw it next eight or nine years afterwards. I was an ordinary seaman in a gunboat lying off Muscat, and, happening to be ashore one afternoon, with nothing to do, I noticed that there was quite a crowd of natives gathered on the shore.

"They told me that the Sultan of Khamia was just going to embark on his way to Mecca, so I stopped to see him, knowing that he was the worst brigand and pirate in the whole of the Gulf, and wishing to see what kind of chap he was.

"Presently he came down with a crowd of attendants to guard him--a fine-looking fellow he was--and after him followed some hooded cages or palanquins. Inside these, hidden from view, were, I knew, his favourite wives, accompanying him as far as Jeddah. Out of the first stretched a beautiful arm, and on it was that snake bracelet.

"I half expected to see it, and recognized it at once. You should have seen that crowd of natives give way and fall back. Everyone knew what it was, and what it meant. They edged away as if it was the devil himself.

"The closed cages were taken on board a lighter; the lighter was towed out to a little steamer rolling in the mouth of the harbour between the two old Portuguese forts, and I soon forgot all about the bracelet.

"Five years afterwards fate brought me to the Gulf again. I was a petty officer in the gunboat _Pigeon_ then, and everywhere we went we heard the name of Jassim, the now Khan of Khamia--the absolute despot of the south-western part of the Persian Gulf, the head of the Jowassim tribes of slavers and pirates, and the terror of the seas. Not a dhow dared leave any port without first paying tribute to him, and the tales of his atrocities made our blood boil with rage; because he was not satisfied with being master of the Gulf, but he'd swoop down on coast towns, demand tribute from them, and, if there was any resistance--even hesitation in paying--he would kill every man, woman, and child in ways so callously brutal that you could not imagine a human being capable of inventing them.

"His latest exploit had been to capture the whole fleet of pearl-fishing dhows and trading baggalows[#] inside Muscat harbour. He filled them with his rascally followers--Bedouins chiefly--and thought himself strong enough to tackle the English.

[#] Baggalow=large ocean-going dhow.

"We soon heard that he was preparing to seize the pearl-fishing dhows which were then fitting out at Bahrein--under the English flag and the English guns of the fort there--to sail for the pearl banks, down south.

"The _Pigeon_ and the old _Sphinx_ were therefore ordered to search for Mr. Jassim and teach him a lesson.

"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 a shallow bay with all his fleet.

"Four hundred and twenty-two dhows we counted, their sloping masts and yards showing up like a forest against the shore. Every one of them was flaunting the red flag with a white border, the flag of the Jowassims. The whole place was a-flutter with them.

"At the top of the bay Jassim had built himself a fort, and lived there, we found out afterwards, in great style, with his harem, sheikhs' sons to wait on him, gold plates to eat off, and everything simply tiptop.

"Four hundred odd dhows were there, manned for the most part by dare-devil Bedouins, with a fair sprinkling of Beni Ghazril, Ballash, and Ahmed tribes--all low-caste tribes not too keen on fighting. Armed they were with old smooth bores--nine-pounders, there or thereabouts--and the little _Pigeon_ was equal to taking on the lot if she could only have fetched in close enough; which she couldn't, as she drew too much water. We had to anchor five miles away from these dhows--five miles if a yard.

"Out came a sheikh or a khan--some big swell--to say that Jassim was only waiting for a change of wind to come out and eat us up. As it was blowing a steady shamel (you two gentlemen will know what that is before you've been out here long), blowing right into the bay, and not likely to ease down for two or three days, we didn't trouble about them trying to escape. Well, the skipper sent that sheikh chap back with a flea in his ear, and presently Jassim himself came along in a grand barge, flying the Turkish flag--like his cheek!--and as cool as anything comes up the side and gives our skipper two hours to clear out of it.

"The cheek of the man amused the skipper, who merely took him aft into his cabin, kept him there for two hours, talking and drinking coffee, showed him his watch and that the two hours had gone by, told him he would have hanged him had he not been flying the Turkish flag, and sent him back to his fleet.

"The tide rising presently, we chanced our luck and moved in a bit closer. Directly we moved, those dhows, hundreds of them, let rip at us with their old pop-guns, the shot plunking into the water half-way, and not even the 'ricos' reaching us.

"That was just what the skipper was waiting for. He opened fire with our four-inch guns, keeping it up from four o'clock that afternoon till six, and setting a good many of the dhows on fire. Just before the sun went down, along came the old _Sphinx_, paddling furiously, and chipped in with her old-fashioned guns, till neither of us could see a thing to aim at, except flames occasionally. The whole bay was a mass of smoke from the dhows we had set on fire with our shells.

"It was a fine sight as the sun set behind the great mountains inshore, and the dark shadows of them came racing across the plain and the harbour, showing up the flames still more brightly.

"If you ever cruise along that coast don't miss that sight--the sight of those shadows as the sun sinks behind the mountains," Mr. Scarlett interrupted his yarn to tell us.

"Well, all that night we and the _Sphinx_ fired occasionally to keep the Arabs' nerves on edge, and made all ready to send in every boat we possessed, at daybreak, to see what we could do.

"That was the longest day's work I ever did, and the worst--the worst," Mr. Scarlett hissed out, apparently waking up and altering his voice, as if he had been somebody else telling the yarn before, or as if he had suddenly turned over a fresh page in a book he was reading, remembered the terrible ending, and wanted to shut it up.

The Baron and I almost jumped out of our chairs.

"Yes, the worst. My God! it was the worst." He jumped to his feet, looked ashamed of himself, sat down, and went on to tell us in a strained voice, as though the ending was too terrible, how the crews of the _Pigeon_ and _Sphinx_ had pulled ashore in their boats, like midges round a horde of elephants. He said that two of the bigger dhows, placed end on end, would be nearly as big as the _Victory_.

We did not believe him.

He told us how, as one boat would clap alongside a huge towering dhow, her demoralized crew would clamber down the other side to their boats or jump overboard. The bluejackets had brought tins of paraffin, with which they set on fire each dhow they boarded, adding still further to the terror and disorder, until the crews of all those four hundred odd junks abandoned them and clustered at the edge of the shore, behind the walls of Jassim's fort, shouting bravely and shooting off their crazy rifles in defiance.

So the bluejackets left off their work of destruction, the boats pulled ashore together, the men wading as soon as their keels grated on the beach, whilst the Nordenfeldts and Gardner guns in their bows fired point-blank into the demoralized crowd of Arab scum. There must have been fifteen thousand of them on the beach; but panic broke out among them, and they melted away from the shore and from the fort, scurrying away inland in front of that handful of bluejackets until they had taken refuge in the defiles and crevasses of those barren mountains, where (as Mr. Scarlett told us) you could hardly believe it possible for a goat to live, but where they sought shelter like frightened sheep.

When he had come to this point Mr. Scarlett paused a little, as if he was reluctant to go on. Then he started again hurriedly:

"And we came back, very slowly back, panting, our feet red-hot and our tongues swollen with thirst, the blazing sun on our backs. And we found Jassim squatting on his prayer mat on the sloping shore, his back turned to the sea and his burning ships, his face turned to the sun.

"A woman crouched at his feet.

"These two were alone, the only living things there; no other human being had stayed with him; she alone of all his harem and his people remained to share his fate. I was sent for to act as interpreter; and our skipper--a tender-hearted man--had pity on Jassim now that his power was absolutely broken, and gave him the choice of coming on board or staying where he was. Jassim chose to stay, answering proudly and defiantly, as though he was still lord of a powerful fleet, or as though his spirit was not broken. Then it was that I saw this hateful snake for the third time--it was on that woman's arm."

Mr. Scarlett's voice began to tremble, and as he coiled cross-legged on the deck, and put his hands to his forehead, we could see his dark, burning eyes gazing outboard, across the deck and the deck rails, to where the sea and the blackness of the night sky met each other, a dark rim beyond the moonlit sea surrounding the ship. His face was haggard and drawn, as if he saw what he was about to tell us.

"Yes, he was there! Jassim was there, his head bowed beneath a coarse burnous[#]; and whilst the rest of us went away to loot the fort and destroy the guns, a seaman and myself were left as guard on those two.

[#] Burnous = loose Arab cloak.

"I spoke to him in his own tongue, told him to cheer up, that his luck was 'out' now, but that it was fate, and a better time would come. He seemed not to hear; he just sat gazing at the sun as it sank lower and lower towards the rim of the mountains, where all his men had disappeared; and his wife crouched moaning before him, putting a hand out now and again to touch him, just to remind him that she was there and suffering too. Presently she bared her left arm, and moaned to him not to allow himself to fall into the hands of the infidel, but to seek Paradise and take her with him, holding out her arm with the snake coiled round it, imploring him to pull it off and set them both free.

"Jassim never answered her, never looked down at her, never moved a muscle of his face, and never looked at that bracelet.

"But the sight of it was too much for the seaman left on guard. Poor fool! he thought it would be a fine curio, and before I could stop him he strode forward, bent down, and seized it.

"The woman gave one shriek of agony as he pulled it from her arm, and with an oath I saw him throw it down in the white sand, where it coiled and writhed, whilst he looked at the back of his hand and wiped away two tiny spots of blood.

"'Suck them, for God's sake, suck them! The thing's poisoned!' I yelled, and, springing to the woman, bent down and sucked two little marks on her arm just below the shoulder.

"Jassim never moved an eyelash.

"The woman jerked herself from me as if the touch of an infidel defiled her, and as if she courted death. She had scarcely dragged herself again to her knees before she began to writhe with pain, and her arm became a dusky swollen purple, spreading upwards over her shoulder as I watched.

"The seaman, cursing, was staggering down to the sea, but swayed and fell half-way, rolling convulsively, clawing at the sand and jerking himself towards the edge of the water.

"I could do nothing for either, and I could not take my eyes from that woman. She was appealing to Jassim to make the snake kill him, so that they should not be separated, and she implored him to hold her, so that she could die in his arms. Never a muscle did he move; and she cried piteously for him to look at her, just one look. But Jassim would not look at her. Her face was dusky now, her swollen tongue came out of her mouth, and in her agony her pride was broken, and she asked me for water. It was the last word she spoke, poor soul! I had some in my water bottle, so knelt down and held it to her lips. But she could not drink, so I poured a little into her mouth and over her face. Her dark eyes, dark as velvet they were, gave me one dumb look of gratitude; then the life went out of them and she was dead.

"As I knelt, Jassim must have stooped down and picked up the gold snake, for he suddenly flicked it round my arm, saying in a deep guttural voice: 'Blessed is the giver of water--above all men. Allah, the great, the compassionate, gave water to those that burned in Hell, even as thou gavest! Thy reward shall be great; only become a true believer, for this is the key of Paradise.'

"I jumped to my feet, half-dazed, and dared not touch the thing as it clung to me, snuggling tightly round my arm.

"The woman was dead. I ran to the sea; the bluejacket's body was moving gently as the tiny waves rolled in. I knew that he was dead, and I turned to implore Jassim to take it off if he knew how to do so without killing me.

"As I turned, the lower edge of the sun touched the top of those awful mountains, and Jassim, crouching on his prayer carpet, a little patch of red on the sloping white beach, with the dead woman in front of him, suddenly raised himself to his knees, held wide his hands, and called: 'Allah ho Akhbar', as though summoning the faithful to prayer and his contemptible followers back to him.

"Then he prostrated himself, and, raising himself again, commenced: 'Bismillahi! Rahmanni! Raheem!' whilst I stood awed as he recited the prayer, till the upper rim of the sun disappeared, and those dark shadows came again down the sides of the mountains and along the waste of sands, rushing like evil spirits towards us....

"The first lieutenant was at my side shaking me. He had his hand on the snake, as if to take it.

"'What the devil do you mean by looting?' he said; but I gave a shriek, and sprang away, striking up his hand.

"As I retreated backwards, step by step, I told him what had happened. He did not believe me; he thought me mad--that I had a 'touch of the sun'. But he let me be, presently, and I covered that thing up with the sleeve of my flannel as best I could--and found myself back again on board the _Pigeon_. Perhaps I was mad, for I could never remember how I did get aboard, and I was on the sick list for many days, lying in a cot, covering the snake with my free hand, and moaning for people to let it be--so they told me afterwards."

The gunner stopped talking, breathed heavily, and wiped his forehead.

He began speaking in his ordinary composed way:

"Since then, thirteen years ago--aye, thirteen years it is next June--an unlucky year--that thing has coiled round my arm and never left it."

My chum's eye had been gradually starting more and more out of his head.

Now he gasped out:

"Never! Do you really mean it?"

"No, never," Mr. Scarlett groaned.

"But, man, a pair of long pincers seizing the head and neck and sliding a sleeve of thin tin or something like that underneath--next your skin--why, there are heaps of ways you could get it off--safe ways--if you really wanted to do so."

"Don't you think I've been tempted, sir; dozens of different ways have been suggested. All seemed safe, but there was just the chance that the thing would strike somewhere--and--and--I'd seen those two die, and put off trying for another day, till now I'm almost used to it.

"Look," the gunner said, pulling up his shirt sleeve and holding out his arm so that the moonlight showed the snake. "Watch its head!" and he very softly began to push one finger underneath a coil. As he did so, the head began to raise itself from his skin, and a tiny dark line, not visible before, showed across the end where the mouth was.

"Stop!" we both cried, perspiration pouring from me and running down my back, the Baron's mouth wide open with fear. "Take your finger away." And he uttered a hoarse, gasping laugh as he knew that at last we were convinced. He drew back his finger, and the head lay back again.

"Now you can guess why I don't want to come back to the Gulf. This bracelet is known to every Arab there. The Sultan of Khamia is certain to find out, sooner or later, that I have it, and then there will be an end to me. Why, sirs, he would give half his wealth to get it back, and once it becomes known that I have it he will get it somehow or other. Getting it, I must die."

"Man alive," the Baron cried, "why don't you try? A thin sheet of tin or something pushed under it, then seize the head with pincers! Why, man, it simply couldn't bite you! There'd be no risk whatsoever."

"But I can't," Mr. Scarlett almost moaned. "I can't face it. If anything did happen--I've seen those two die--remember that. It seems part of me now--thirteen years it has been there--and I've been brought up amongst Arabs--my mother was half an Arab, and there's something in my blood which won't let me try. It's fate--Kismet--and I dare not fly in face of that."

The Baron fell back in his chair hopelessly.

"Then why didn't you back out of coming here? Why didn't you explain?" I asked.

Then his manner changed again. He had come out of his dreams, and began talking hurriedly as if his lips were shaking.

"Truth is, gentlemen, I'm a born coward. I was too frightened to let on that I was frightened of coming out this way again. It's the same thing with many things I do. I'm too frightened to let on as how I'm frightened, and up to now things have gone all right. I'm a coward, sir, and I don't mind telling you," he said, turning to me. "We have to live together for the next two years--if I'm spared--and you'll find that out before you've known me many weeks, so you may as well know now. Feel my hand, sir!"

I felt it. It was cold and clammy and trembling. His dark face looked a ghastly mud colour.

"That's simply because I've been talking about it, and it reminds me of things which have been--and might be again."

"Come down below and have a brandy-and-soda," I said, and we took him down below, rather glad to get into the noisy glare of the smoking saloon, even though it was so hot.

We always slept on deck, the Baron and I, but that night, whether it was the heat or the effects of the gunner's story, precious little sleep did we get; so, after tossing about restlessly for an hour, we gave up trying, and leant over the deck rails and talked.

"I'm sure it would be as easy as winking," my chum said. "One could lash wire or even string round its head, so that the mouth could not open. The fangs couldn't come out then.

"I wonder what became of that man Jassim," he broke in presently. "He's probably dead, so no one could possibly know that the gunner has it. If he keeps it covered up he will be as safe as anything."

He gazed out over the sea, thinking.

"And probably what poison is left in it wouldn't kill a canary now," he burst out again--neither of us could take our minds off the snake. "Thirteen years ago! It must have lost its power by now."

We went to our beds after a time and tried to sleep. Baron Popple Opstein was soon snoring, but presently jumped up, shrieking, and I saw him trying to pull something off his arm.

I shook him until he woke up, very much ashamed of himself. He was perspiring like a drowned rat, and it made me feel queer and shaky. I did not like the mystery of the beastly thing. I had to live with the gunner and it. If he was going to fill me up with many more such stories, I should soon be frightened of my own shadow.

*CHAPTER III*

*Skipper of the "Bunder Abbas"*

Two days later we arrived at Aden, and found the _Intrepid_ anchored close to Steamer Point, looking cool and comfortable under her white awnings and white paint. The officer of the "guard", coming across for her mails, took the Baron and myself back with him.

As skipper of the _Bunder Abbas_ I felt a somewhat important personage, but Commander Duckworth, the captain of the _Intrepid_, a short, red-faced, wiry man, full of energy, soon disabused me about that.

It was terrifically hot in his cabin, and he was not in any mood for talking.

"Eh, yes, Martin--you are Martin, are you?--so you've come to take poor Collingwood's job. I won't shake hands--too hot. Well, passages have been booked for you and your gunner in that steamer," pointing to a disreputable little steamer I could see through the gun port. "She leaves to-morrow morning at daylight. You will go aboard her to-night. We lent Wilson, one of our fellows, to the _Bunder Abbas_, until you came. You'll find him at Jask--only too anxious to see you, I expect. You'll take her over from him, and the boss at the telegraph station--a kind of political agent--will pass on any orders to you. You are, more or less, lent to the Indian Government, you know."

I did not know, but that was nothing.

His letters were brought in then, and he nodded for me to leave. However, I was so fearfully keen to learn more that I blurted out:

"Any chance of picking up a dhow or anything like that, sir?"

"Of course there is always a chance," he said energetically. "Wilson will tell you all about everything: good morning!"

I went away to the ward-room, hoping to get more information there; but the place was a litter of newspapers, and everybody was busy reading letters and paid little attention to me.

"_Bunder Abbas_. What size is she?"

"Oh, about as big as that table!" was all that I could get out of them.

The Baron and I parted company that afternoon, when I went aboard the little steamer--the _Ras-al-Musat_. I found the gunner already there, and also that solitary little lady, with the yellow hair and humorous grey eyes--the little lady who had snubbed the fussy major--and me. She also was bound for Jask, of all places in the world, and, as at meal times she sat on the captain's right and I on his left hand, we had to talk. However, she was much more interested in Mr. Scarlett and his stories of Arabian life than in me.

At daybreak of the fifth morning we dropped anchor two miles off Jask, and I strained my eyes to catch a first glimpse of the _Bunder Abbas_, though in the hazy light I could not distinguish her amongst a cluster of dhows, anchored close inshore. All I could see was a wide sweep of yellow sand and a low-lying peninsula, jutting out into the sea, with some glaring white square buildings at its end.

The place--if it really was an inhabited place--seemed absolutely asleep, until, presently, some small, crazy lighters, full of jabbering natives, came slowly off to unload whatever cargo we had for them.

Half an hour later I spied a tiny little tub of a dinghy pulling our way. As she drew closer I saw that Wilson was in it. I had known him when he was a sub-lieutenant, and I met him at the gangway.

"Jolly glad to see you," he burst out. "Everything's all right aboard the _B.A_. I've ordered a chunk of goat for your breakfast--couldn't get anything else. I told the political chap, up at the telegraph station, that you'll be coming to see him. He will tell you anything you want to know. Here's the 'signal book' and the 'cruising order book'. Sign your 'tally' there. There are no more confidential books to hand over."

I signed the receipt for them.

"Now you're the skipper of the _B.A_. I've finished with her, thank Heaven! Griffiths, in the dinghy, can take you back now."

Having so satisfactorily (?) concluded the formalities of handing over command, Wilson took some letters which I had brought for him, and went off to read them. I presumed that he was going to Karachi to catch a steamer back to Aden, but did not take the trouble to ask him before the gunner and myself left the _Ras-al-Musat_.

If you had seen us being pulled inshore in that tiny dinghy to join my first command you would have laughed. The dinghy's stern was nearly level with the water, and her bows so cocked up in the air that Mr. Scarlett had to creep for'ard to "trim the dish".

As we gradually drew nearer the shore, I noticed a weird odour in the air.

"What's that?" I asked the bluejacket, sniffing it in.

"All them Arab or Persh'un places smell like that, sir," he said. "You'll not notice it in a week's time."

I sucked it in through my nose. At last I had come to the edge of things, and cut myself adrift from civilization. It was grand, and I felt as happy as a bird--and looked like one, too, I expect, perched as I was on the top of my two cases.

"That's 'er, sir," the bluejacket said presently, jerking his chin over his shoulder. Then I saw the _Bunder Abbas_ for the first time. She and I were to have many exciting experiences together during the next few months.

As I saw her then she looked draggled to a degree. Her sides were a positive disgrace--paint off in large patches; her awnings were dirty and badly spread on bent, crazy-looking stanchions; and her rusty unpainted cable hung drearily out of a most disreputable hawse-pipe.

In her bows, under the awning, there was a gun, in a dirty canvas cover--a six-pounder I guessed--and aft two Maxims were cocked up at different angles, in the most slovenly manner. Their water-jackets, which should have been so bright, were painted a beastly mud colour, and from the muzzle of one dangled a bunch of green bananas.

"Your own mother won't know you in a week's time, my sweetheart," I chuckled to myself, as the bluejacket tugged at one oar and twisted the dinghy alongside.

I swung myself aboard, to be met by a bearded petty officer with a shifty, crafty face, who saluted me about a dozen times in the first two minutes. Five or six disreputable-looking sailors peered round the corner of the engine-room casings to take stock of me, and some lascars sitting jabbering round a stew-pot took no notice whatever.

I looked round. The deck was littered with rubbish; men's clothes were stretched on it everywhere--to dry; burnt matches and cigarette ends lay in every corner.

"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, sir?" he added hastily, to distract my anger, and led me up a ladder, through an opening in the fore awning, to a platform round the mast and funnel. On this platform deck, for'ard of the mast, were the steering-wheel, compass, and engine-room telegraphs, also a tiny little signal-locker; aft of the funnel was a diminutive deck-house, about half the size of a railway compartment. It had a low bunk on each side, with scarcely room to stand between them, a few shelves, lockers under the bunks, and a cracked looking-glass. Overhead the paintwork was blackened by an oil lamp which swung from the roof and looked as if it had not been cleaned or trimmed for years.

Outside the cabin there was just enough deck space for a small folding table and a couple of canvas folding chairs.

"Them chairs belonged to Mr. Collingwood, what died of sunstroke, and the gunner, what went off 'un 'is 'ead," the petty officer explained.

I made a grimace.

"You'll 'ave a cup of corfee?" he asked, rubbing his hands together and smiling ingratiatingly as a dirty unkempt Indian boy (a Tamil I found out afterwards) brought two cups of horrid-looking coffee and a tin of condensed milk with milk congealed down one side of it. "Mr. Wilson 'as ordered your breakfast, and this 'ere boy--Percy we calls 'im--looks arter you two orficers."

Nothing seemed to stop his talking machine.

I snorted--it was the only way I could express my feelings--and looked round to see what had become of Mr. Scarlett, who had disappeared.

"What's your routine on board?" I asked, going down the ladder again to that six-pounder in the bows.

"We ain't exactly got none," the petty officer answered. "Mr. Collingwood, 'im what died of sunstroke, 'e didn't 'ave no regular routine--an' Mr. Wilson didn't alter nothing."

He said this in a half-fawning, half-defiant manner, as much as to say: "Don't you come making trouble."

Mr. Scarlett joined us, his black eyes gleaming, stepping through the little crowd of lascars and scattering them.

"They won't hang any more bananas on my guns," he chuckled.