That gave me some idea of the job.
"The gunner's gone mad too. We'll have to send another out, I suppose—confound him!"
I could not help smiling at the idea of a mad gunner being left there.
He cut my smile short with a sharp: "I'll put your name down. Good morning!"
I backed clumsily out of the door.
"What's the Bunder Abbas?" I asked the porter outside.
"The Bunder Habbas!" he corrected me, repeating the name to give himself time to think.
"Something in the Persian Gulf?" I said, to aid his memory.
But he didn't know—none of the other porters knew; so he rang up some mysterious individual on the telephone.
"There's a gen'l'man 'ere wants to know what the Bunder Habbas his. Habbas—Bunder Habbas—hout in the Persian Gulf."