As we gradually drew nearer the shore, I noticed a weird odour in the air.
"What's that?" I asked the bluejacket, sniffing it in.
"All them Arab or Persh'un places smell like that, sir," he said. "You'll not notice it in a week's time."
I sucked it in through my nose. At last I had come to the edge of things, and cut myself adrift from civilization. It was grand, and I felt as happy as a bird—and looked like one, too, I expect, perched as I was on the top of my two cases.
"That's 'er, sir," the bluejacket said presently, jerking his chin over his shoulder. Then I saw the Bunder Abbas for the first time. She and I were to have many exciting experiences together during the next few months.
As I saw her then she looked draggled to a degree. Her sides were a positive disgrace—paint off in large patches; her awnings were dirty and badly spread on bent, crazy-looking stanchions; and her rusty unpainted cable hung drearily out of a most disreputable hawse-pipe.
In her bows, under the awning, there was a gun, in a dirty canvas cover—a six-pounder I guessed—and aft two Maxims were cocked up at different angles, in the most slovenly manner. Their water-jackets, which should have been so bright, were painted a beastly mud colour, and from the muzzle of one dangled a bunch of green bananas.
"Your own mother won't know you in a week's time, my sweetheart," I chuckled to myself, as the bluejacket tugged at one oar and twisted the dinghy alongside.
I swung myself aboard, to be met by a bearded petty officer with a shifty, crafty face, who saluted me about a dozen times in the first two minutes. Five or six disreputable-looking sailors peered round the corner of the engine-room casings to take stock of me, and some lascars sitting jabbering round a stew-pot took no notice whatever.
I looked round. The deck was littered with rubbish; men's clothes were stretched on it everywhere—to dry; burnt matches and cigarette ends lay in every corner.