Gunboat and Gun-runner: A Tale of the Persian Gulf

by T. T. Jeans

I could not help laughing at the idea of a day's "shoot" at home when all the beaters from the countryside carried rifles. It would make some "shoots" a good deal more exciting than they often are.

The sheikh himself would have sent his rifle away as well, though I saw that it would almost break his heart to do so. However, I explained by gestures that I wanted him to shoot with me, and his pride and joy were comical to see.

Eventually we shoved off for the ravine, followed by hooded women bearing huge chatties of water, and every "toddler" in the village carrying a bigger or smaller bundle of dry date-palm leaves. It was as quaint a shooting party as ever I had seen.

As we traversed the rocky slopes across which the Intrepids had advanced to the attack of the mouth of the ravine, the natives spread out to pick up battered bullets and empty cartridge cases. They were lying there in hundreds, and every big stone had one or two white marks where bullets had struck it. At the mouth of the ravine, at the spot where the Arabs had first taken up a position, the stones and rocks were white with splashes and fragments of nine-pounder shells, and fuses and shrapnel bullets lay among them. Close by were three cairns with wooden crosses. These were the graves of the three who had been killed, and the sheikh explained that he and his people had piled up those big stones so that the wolves and jackals should not disturb them.

Passing through the ravine we once more entered that vast hollow, left the sunshine behind us, and craned our necks upwards to see the gap. Six days ago, when I was there, it and the path had been full of living creatures and ringing with shouts from one zigzag to another, as the bluejackets and villagers tried to bring down the camels. Now the gloom was haunted with silence and loneliness. Except for two or three bloated vultures, which flew heavily upwards and disappeared over the rim, not a thing moved. The not-yet-whitened skeletons of several camels showed what a feast they and the jackals had made.

As we did on that first memorable day, so we did on this. The villagers were ordered to remain at the bottom whilst the sheikh, Mr. Scarlett, myself, and the rest of the men climbed up the zigzag. We left Hartley below; he solemnly shook his head when he saw what kind of a path it was, and, as he was already pretty well "done up", I let him stay. He promptly went to sleep.

When we did reach the top, walked through the gap, and looked down into the valleys beyond, I almost expected to see the huge snake of a caravan wriggling up to us again. I showed Mr. Scarlett where we had first seen it, and pointed out the rocks behind which we had crouched nearly all that day; also the rock on which Jaffa had stood calling out in the dark: "Khalli bunduk 'ak! Ma kattle kum! Ist agel!"

He was very interested, but the sheikh was still more impatient, so we spread out along the crest just as we had done before, and then he gave the signal for the villagers to beat up towards us.

I don't know what I imagined they would do. They were not flies, or even goats, so I could hardly expect them to climb up the precipice; but what actually occurred was that, after spreading over the whole of the bottom of the "coffee-cup", yelling and throwing stones into any places likely to conceal a leopard, they all made for the zigzag path and came up it very swiftly, one behind the other, yelling like fury, beating the rocks with their spears as they passed them, the ones in rear beating the rocks which had already been struck a hundred times already, just as vigorously as the first. Occasionally they threw blazing bundles of date-palm leaves into crevices and caves; but, except for this and the noise they made, their ideas of what was wanted were very laughable.

The sheikh had lain down close to me. Presently he gave an exclamation and pointed. I saw a leopard slinking round a rock just ahead of some shouting villagers; he was at least four hundred yards away, and before I could stop the old man he had fired his rifle, regardless of the fact that if his aim was anywhere in that direction he was far more likely to hit one of his own people than the leopard. I need not have worried myself. The bullet struck a rock close below us and shrieked away into the sky, whilst the recoiling butt struck his cheek. First of all he looked to see whether the leopard was dead, and as it had disappeared behind a rock he was as pleased as "Punch"; then he felt his cheek and patted his rifle reprovingly as if it were a naughty boy. But he smacked it a moment after, when the leopard appeared again, bounding up the rocks.