It was a shout from a man on the outlook on the fore-topmast cross-trees.
"Where away?" sang Guilford, who was on duty.
"On the starboard bow, sir. Well in towards the land. Just coming round the wooded point yonder."
"Why, sir," he hailed a few minutes afterwards, "it ain't one, but three, four o' them there is."
Guilford went scrambling up into the maintop with his glasses slung over his shoulder. He was too tall to make a very graceful sailor, but he got there all the same.
It was in the forenoon watch, just two days after they had left the slave camp in the creek. The other cruiser had gone on before with a large cargo of the freed slaves, and would be in Zanzibar ere now.
At the very first hail from aloft everyone had hurried on deck, to get if possible a peep at the enemy, for no one doubted for a moment that these great dhows, now slowly rounding the point, were the fighting fleet of the daring Arab Viking, Abdularram.
They were prettily manoeuvred, and at first it was hoped that they would bear down upon the Breezy and attack.
But Abdularram--who had not been killed after all--was too good an admiral to do anything of the kind. His tactics were those of naval guerilla warfare, and now he filled sail and stood out to sea, bearing up for the south and east. The reason was simply because the wind blew in this direction, and before a breeze a well-rigged dhow is as fleet as a drifting cloud.
"Prepare for action!"