"By seven o'clock the skipper was just mixing his third tumbler. By seven o'clock everything was in readiness: the oars were muffled and the rudder so shipped that it wouldn't unship by the under-kick of a breaker on the bar. Then, from well-greased blocks the boat was lowered, and silently, but swiftly, glided shorewards to the dreaded bar. We took with us but two trusty men, and two trusty sacks. Soon the white crests of the breakers were in view, and we could hear their vicious, sullen boom. Not easy work this crossing of bars, as you are aware. Presently we were heading for the only dark gate in this ocean of breakers, I steering, Dawson with one helping hand on each of the oars. Now we have entered the gate. "Steady now, men!" A wave catches us up behind and hurls our tiny boat first heavenward, then, with inconceivable speed, onwards, through a swirl of surf, and, a few moments afterwards we are in smooth water, wet but safe.
"'Well done,' said Dawson; 'but if we had capsized, the sharks would have been dining on us at this present moment."
"'Beggin' yer pardons, gentlemen,' said one of the rowers, 'but I'd rather be three days and three nights in the belly of a shark, like Jonah was, than one whole blessed month athout tobaccer.'
"'That were a whale, Jim,' said his mate. 'I don't care a dime,' said the first speaker; 'I knows I likes my pipe, and I likes a quid. Now, in a night like this, for instance, what a blessing it would be to light up, and--and--why, it won't abear thinkin' on, hanged if it will.'
"'Now lay on your oars, men,' I said. 'I want to see what is inside a little bottle of medical comforts the doctor stowed away under here.'
"It was a bottle of sick-mess sherry, which we all shared, and pronounced the best ever we had tasted, and the doctor 'a brick'.
"Onwards now we sped, as fast as oars could pull us, Dawson and I occasionally relieving the men and taking a spell at the oars. It was moonlight, I said, and until we were fairly in the river this was in favour of us; now, however, it was all against us. None hate the English more than does your fighting Arab of slave proclivities. At any moment we might fall in with a slave dhow, and the crew thereof would certainly not miss such a favourable opportunity of paying off old scores. We had lots of arms on board, and so we meant, if attacked, to peg away at the beggars to the bitter end. However, discretion is the better part of valour, so we kept right in the centre of the stream, where we could be least seen. This was slow work, but safe.
"It must have been past ten o'clock, and we were well up the river, when, on rounding a point, we came suddenly in sight of a large-armed dhow, slowly going down stream. My first intention was to alter our course. 'No, no,' said Dawson, who is no end of a clever fellow, 'that will only create suspicion. Let me hail her;' and he did so in good Arabic. If suspicion was excited on board the strange dhow, it was, I feel sure, lulled again when Dawson began, in stentorian tones, to sing a well-known Arab boating chant. The song, I feel sure, saved us, and so we kept it up nearly all the way to Lamoo.
"About a mile from the town we crept inshore and hid our boat in the bush, leaving one man in her. Now there is but one or two European merchants in the town, and one of these we knew, but the way to his house we were ignorant of; but we knew where Comoro Jack lived in the outskirts. He had been our guide before, so thither we went, and happily found Jack at home: a tall young savage, arrayed only in a waist belt, and an enormous (42nd Highlander's) busby on, and a tall spear in one hand.
"'Well, you blessed Englishmen, what you want wid Jack?' Such was our greeting. We hastily told him, and the amount, and--