At daybreak next morning we were off Jask Point, with its square white telegraph buildings and its low sand-hills jutting out into the sea. As the shamel was still blowing hard from the north-west I anchored to the east'ard of the point, close to some rocks, and among a number of dhows sheltering there.
Percy pipeclayed my shoes and helmet, laid out my last clean white suit of uniform, and, having made myself look as smart as I could, I landed close to the old ruined fort (or sheikh's house) and walked up towards the telegraph buildings, meeting the political agent, in pyjamas, smoking a cigar and looking critically at the earth breastwork and the line of wire entanglements.
"Hallo!" he called out cheerily; "they told me you were coming in. You people have made it hot for everybody along the coast, and no mistake!"
He did not want me to give him any news. He had already heard of the capture of one dhow and the destruction of the other, of the terrible losses of the Afghans, of our men being killed, and that Bungi and Sudab had been destroyed. The Afghans had got the idea into their heads that the poor, wretched Persian villagers had given the "show" away, so had taken this ghastly revenge.
"You can't keep anything secret in this country," he said; "the way news travels is simply marvellous. I even heard that an officer had been wounded.
"Was that you?" he asked, looking at my forehead. "I heard that one of you had been seen to fall whilst running along the beach."
I shook my head. "I did not land. It was my chum. Shot through the calf he was. He's all right now."
"Those Afghans came along this way before they went home," he continued; "camped round the new fort, halfway to old Jask; hanged a couple of Persian customs people who lived in it; hanged them from the top of the wall to show their contempt for the Persian Governor; looted it and went away next morning with their camels and the women and children captured in those villages. They had a great number of wounded, those you had wounded—poor wretches!—and threatened to come along and cut our throats later on. A few of them did actually ride up here and fire their rifles—but that was nothing. They put down their losses—they had more than sixty killed—and their ill luck with the gun-running business to the telegraph cable—about right they are too—and would do anything to destroy it and us. Before they went away they cut the land line running along the coast to Karachi, just to give us the trouble of repairing it."
"Aren't you rather nervous?" I asked him.
He shrugged his shoulders.