"How did you find the B.A.?" I asked; and my chum explained that the Intrepid had taken my dhow in tow, steaming to the north'ard; that at daybreak the launch had been sighted, and though she had raised steam again she could not use her engines as something had fouled her propeller, below the waterline of course, where Mr. Scarlett could not get at it.
"The result was," old Popple Opstein went on to tell me, "that we had to tow her as well, and when we anchored here sent our divers down to clear it."
Later on Nicholson allowed me to dress, Percy smiling out of his great eyes when he brought me some clean clothes. Afterwards I went aboard the Bunder Abbas to hear Mr. Scarlett's account of what had happened and to see what repairs were still necessary. I found people from the Intrepid busily straightening the bent stanchions and fitting a new after-awning cut from an old awning belonging to the cruiser.
"She'll look all right in a couple of days," Mr. Scarlett said, as he and I watched the last few boxes of ammunition being hoisted up through the dhow's hatches and transferred to the Intrepid's battery deck. It was a most comforting sight.
"Thought I'd seen the last of you, sir, when that big squall struck the dhow, and thought you'd seen the last of the Bunder Abbas when she half-filled herself with water, her fires had been put out, and that hawser coiled itself round the screw.
"My, sir, but I was being sick every few minutes with pure fright—I was that frightened that I wanted to jump overboard and get the drowning over quietly, without a lot of lascars howling and clawing round me—as I was waiting for 'em to do when she did sink. We made some kind of a sea-anchor with what was left of that awning and some spars, got her head to the wind, and baled her out with buckets—with buckets, sir! Three mortal hours that took, and another six to raise steam again, the lascars all preferring to drown up on deck, so not a blessed one would go below.
"We never noticed that hawser round her screw till we let the steam in her engines, wound a few more turns round her screw, and brought them up all standing. Thank God! we hadn't cast off our sea-anchor, or we'd have had all the making of another over again—and dead tired, tired as dogs, we all were."
There was this to say for Mr. Scarlett—I never doubted him. Whenever he told me of anything, I felt perfectly sure that he had told me all. However, I was inquisitive to know how he himself had actually behaved, so could not help asking Corporal Webster later on what kind of a time they had had, hoping that he might have something to say about him.
"Awful weren't the word for it, sir; the worst time I've ever had in my life. We none of us thought she'd float, and she wouldn't have but for the gunner—sick one moment, working like half a dozen men the next. Why, sir, when we steadied her into the wind, an' baled her out, he laid the fires in the boilers himself, no one else knowing how to do it, them lascar chaps funking going below, and we chipping up a mess table (the only dry bit of wood on board) and passing the bits down to him."
I learnt still more of that extraordinary man by watching Percy, the Tamil boy. His eyes showed the most unbounded admiration for the gunner. He simply slaved for him all day long, and seemed to be perfectly happy so long as he was doing something for him: pipeclaying his helmet, or washing out his vests—anything, in fact.