[pg 130]
"If I do business of that kind this cruise, Rimmle, I promise you I'll do it with Hassan."
"Thank you, Captain. Speedy voyage to you, and don't forget Hassan. Good-by, sir, to you."
Within the hour we sailed for Momba.
III
A squadron of corvettes and sloops o' war put their glasses on us lazily as we neared Momba; but with our Dutch bow and stern, our stumpy spars, no self-respecting war-ship was bothering the Triton. They let us pass without so much as a hail.
Captain Blaise planned to cross Momba Bar that night, all the more surely to cross because the watchers ashore, seeing us hang on and off in the late afternoon, would probably report that we were waiting for morning. So we hauled her to in the dusk where, were it light, we would have seen, under its three fathom of water, Momba Bar lying white and smooth and quiet as a sanded deck as we passed on. With the wind coming low and light from the land that was; but were it a high wind and from the sea, there would be no going over that bar at night or any other time.
We slipped silently up the inside, the northerly passage, to the lagoon, and crept up the lagoon just [pg 131] as silently, but even as we were mooring the Bess in a nook at the head of the lagoon, a tall Arab was alongside. With him Captain Blaise and I went ashore in the ship's long-boat, and to avoid suspicion we took no arms. An hour of camp-fires and shadows under the trees we wasted then with this sharp trader Hassan. No printed calicoes, or brass rings, or looking-glasses for him, nor rum, he being a true believer. Nothing of that; but of gold paid into hand, and plenty of it there must be. And Captain Blaise, to allay suspicion, discussed matters hotly. Finally he agreed to the Arab's terms, and Hassan salaamed, and out under the open sky we went again.
"A proper villain, Guy, is that fellow. Did you ever see so wonderfully cunning a smile? And in the morning I am to give him a draft on Rimmle! Sometimes I think there must be something infantile about me, strangers do pick me up for such an innocent at times. But in the morning, my shrewd Hassan—"
Naked feet padded beside us. "O Marster Carpt'n, Marster Carpt'n, suh—"