Beyond boarding this dhow, though we saw some others at a distance which we were unable to forereach on, the beggars being too handy on a wind, we did not have a single exciting incident for the three months or more that we were detached from our ship; and all of us, as I have said, were longing for something to wake us up.
This ‘something’ came at last.
Ay; and in a most unexpected fashion, too!
It was getting near the time for the Mermaid to come and relieve us, and we were making for our rendezvous at Bagamoyo, to the south of Zanzibar, for her to pick us up.
The south-west monsoon having slackened down a good deal within the last few days, though the month of August, when it usually blows with its greatest force, we were able to work well to windward; and we were rapidly closing on Bagamoyo, when the sea began to get up in a very strange manner, and the sky, which had been cloudless, as customary, since the morning, became clouded with masses of fleeting vapour that presently banked themselves on the horizon to the north.
“I say, Draper,” said Mr Chisholm, who, since his promotion, had been appointed to the cutter, turning round to our coxswain, “what do you think of the weather?”
“Think, sir?” rejoined Draper, who had served on the East African station before joining the Mermaid, and ‘knew the ropes,’ as the saying goes. “I don’t think about it at all, sir.”
“Well, well,” said Mr Chisholm, who was a jocular sort of young fellow and never hard on a man, besides which he knew Draper’s crusty way, “tell us what you know, then.”
“Very good, sir,” replied our old shellback of a coxswain. “Then, I knows, sir, the monsoon’s on the shift, and we’re agoin’ to have a blow from the nor’ard afore dark.”
“What do you advise our doing, coxen?”