I went across to the Intrepid and told Commander Duckworth everything. He, too, roared with laughter but quickly checked himself.
"That's all right. It doesn't matter one way or the other. You saw the battle; you got there just in time to stop it; the money was just in time to make peace; and you saw the Prodigal Son, as you call him, out hawking. That is all the Sultan wants to know, and he'll be just as grateful to us as though you had actually rescued him."
And he was, too, and sent me a Mauser pistol, just like Jaffa's, as a present.
CHAPTER XIV
We Deal with Jassim
The packing in the high-pressure piston-rod gland blew out again as we anchored at Muscat. As a matter of fact, the whole of our engines required a thorough overhaul after practically four months of almost continuous steaming; and though the lascar engine-drivers had done their best—a very poor best—it was now entirely beyond their capabilities to put things to "rights", and make all the necessary readjustments and the Bunder Abbas again fit for sea.
In these circumstances, and as neither the political agent nor Commander Duckworth had anything very pressing for us to do, artificers were sent across from the Intrepid to carry out the necessary repairs. Whilst they were opening out the engines, working and sweating down below, there was, of course, but little to do on deck, and I had at first a very pleasant, lazy time indeed—pleasant, at any rate, after five o'clock in the evening. Before five o'clock the heat was much too great except to pant and perspire under the awnings; after that hour one's muscles began to call out for exercise. Then, with Popple Opstein and the rest of the Intrepid's officers, we would often pull across to a sandy beach—where no sharks ventured—about a mile from the rock on which the southern of those two old Portuguese forts stood, and have grand bathing picnics—in and out of the water for a couple of hours at a time. Occasionally fifty or sixty of the men would come with us and drag the seine-net, for the sea was simply alive with fish. If we did not do this, we would go up to the political agent's house and play tennis in the compound there—on a concrete court—in the most terrible glare; or perhaps we would wander out through the main gates of the town and scramble about the ravines and defiles leading inland.
I have never in my life been in such a hot place as this was. The little white town of Muscat is surrounded by bare, razor-backed, volcanic, rocky ridges; the harbour itself is enclosed by more black, naked cliffs, and these seem to collect the violent heat of the sun all day to give it out all night. The temperature in the shade on board seldom fell below a hundred degrees during the day, and seldom dropped more than four or five degrees at night. Sleep under these conditions was very difficult, very unrefreshing, and often I have tumbled and sweated on my grass mat till daybreak, kept awake by the oppressive heat and the weird chants of the watchmen calling across the harbour from the towers of the two great forts.
Several of my men went sick. Little wounds (a scratched mosquito bite, for instance) simply would not heal; and Wiggins, the broken-rib man, had to be sent down to Karachi suffering from fever. He was very loath to go, poor chap.
For the first two or three days Mr. Scarlett was quite happy. I let him take some men ashore to paint the name of the launch on the rocky face of one of the sides of the harbour. He painted it in white letters, four feet long—"BUNDER ABBAS"—among the names of a hundred other ships which had done the same during the last twenty years, and this kept his mind occupied; but after he had finished, he shrank into his usual saturnine self, his dark eyes seemed to sink farther back than ever beneath his shaggy eyebrows, and he spent his whole time watching lest Jassim should come again. For fear of seeing him, and for fear of any violence, he never ventured on the mainland.