"That was the longest day's work I ever did, and the worst—the worst," Mr. Scarlett hissed out, apparently waking up and altering his voice, as if he had been somebody else telling the yarn before, or as if he had suddenly turned over a fresh page in a book he was reading, remembered the terrible ending, and wanted to shut it up.
The Baron and I almost jumped out of our chairs.
"Yes, the worst. My God! it was the worst." He jumped to his feet, looked ashamed of himself, sat down, and went on to tell us in a strained voice, as though the ending was too terrible, how the crews of the Pigeon and Sphinx had pulled ashore in their boats, like midges round a horde of elephants. He said that two of the bigger dhows, placed end on end, would be nearly as big as the Victory.
We did not believe him.
He told us how, as one boat would clap alongside a huge towering dhow, her demoralized crew would clamber down the other side to their boats or jump overboard. The bluejackets had brought tins of paraffin, with which they set on fire each dhow they boarded, adding still further to the terror and disorder, until the crews of all those four hundred odd junks abandoned them and clustered at the edge of the shore, behind the walls of Jassim's fort, shouting bravely and shooting off their crazy rifles in defiance.
So the bluejackets left off their work of destruction, the boats pulled ashore together, the men wading as soon as their keels grated on the beach, whilst the Nordenfeldts and Gardner guns in their bows fired point-blank into the demoralized crowd of Arab scum. There must have been fifteen thousand of them on the beach; but panic broke out among them, and they melted away from the shore and from the fort, scurrying away inland in front of that handful of bluejackets until they had taken refuge in the defiles and crevasses of those barren mountains, where (as Mr. Scarlett told us) you could hardly believe it possible for a goat to live, but where they sought shelter like frightened sheep.
When he had come to this point Mr. Scarlett paused a little, as if he was reluctant to go on. Then he started again hurriedly:
"And we came back, very slowly back, panting, our feet red-hot and our tongues swollen with thirst, the blazing sun on our backs. And we found Jassim squatting on his prayer mat on the sloping shore, his back turned to the sea and his burning ships, his face turned to the sun.
"A woman crouched at his feet.
"These two were alone, the only living things there; no other human being had stayed with him; she alone of all his harem and his people remained to share his fate. I was sent for to act as interpreter; and our skipper—a tender-hearted man—had pity on Jassim now that his power was absolutely broken, and gave him the choice of coming on board or staying where he was. Jassim chose to stay, answering proudly and defiantly, as though he was still lord of a powerful fleet, or as though his spirit was not broken. Then it was that I saw this hateful snake for the third time—it was on that woman's arm."