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

by T. T. Jeans

Whether or no there were as many leopards as we had believed, at any rate we saw no more there, and presently they brought my dead one up to the gap and commenced skinning him. Whilst they were doing this the sheikh led us down to some craggy rocks on the other slope, and a leopard was frightened out of them but broke back through the frightened villagers, and only gave me a long and hopeless shot whilst he was travelling very fast. I am sure the old gentleman was rather pleased that he wasn't the only one who missed.

This was a disappointing day's shooting, but the exercise did us all the good in the world, and we went back to the village quite content. As we drew near the villagers rushed ahead to exchange their spears and sticks for their beloved rifles, came back to meet us, and fired another feu de joie.

At a word from Mr. Scarlett the sheikh, seizing a stick, rushed in among them and whacked left and right till they stopped. If he realized the danger it was a very plucky thing to do, because bullets were whizzing all round us.

It was very evident that if the villagers went on expending their precious cartridges as they had this day, they would soon have none left to keep the Bedouins away. This waste of good ammunition so outraged Mr. Scarlett's professional feelings that he actually spent the greater part of the next week teaching them the elements of rifle shooting. I had never seen him so happy for so many days together.

Under the shade of some "nabac" trees close to the well he rigged a tripod and a sand-bag for a rifle to rest on, painted some black bull's-eyes on the side of one of the huts, and every evening showed the villagers how to look along their sights and get them in a line with the bull's-eye.

At the end of the week he rigged a target some way along the beach and invited me to see the results of his training. I do not suppose that there was a single man, woman, or child but had come down to join in the excitement. They were all gathered round the firing point, some eighty or one hundred yards from the target, jabbering noisily—the children not being more childish than the "grown-ups".

Then in absolute silence—even the children held their breath—the first man lay down and aimed very carefully. He fired, and every single soul scampered pell-mell along the beach to the target to see where it had been hit.

In spite of actually seeing most of the bullets striking the sand, they had the most implicit confidence in each other's marksmanship; and I nearly burst myself with laughing, when, after a little while, they began to tire of running to and fro after every shot, and actually gathered round the target itself with their heads as close to the black bull's-eye as they could get them, waiting for the next shot.

Mr. Scarlett managed with difficulty to bring them back, but at this rate the millennium would have arrived by the time each man had fired the three rounds he allowed them. As a matter of fact this exhibition of the result of his training did take three evenings, and I do not remember that any man hit any part of the canvas more than twice. Most of them never hit it at all. However, they were not in the least disappointed; they were all too ignorant and stupid to mind what became of the bullet so long as the noise and recoil were big enough. Not even when Mr. Scarlett put the target four hundred yards or so farther along the beach, and he and I fired a dozen rounds and hit the bull's-eye seven times between us, did they show much appreciation. Every one of them—even the children—put their fingers in the holes and shouted with glee; but they evidently considered the whole performance due to magic—not our magic, but the rifles' magic.

The sheikh refused to fire, evidently not wanting to disgrace himself before the tribe, although his explanation, given to Jaffa, was that it was quite unnecessary—"that if he could hit a vulture at twenty paces, of course he could hit a huge piece of canvas."