It was such hard luck on those two women. The political agent and Borsen did not count. They'd gone into the job with their eyes open, but the women—well, that was different. They should never have been allowed to come to this desolate, exposed, out-of-the-way spot, on the very edge of civilization.
Those mountains, too, were only twenty miles away; the Afghans could swoop down from them in a night, appear as unexpectedly as a vulture, get between the telegraph station and old Jask, with its fifty Bedouin border police, and cut it off entirely.
I sent for Jaffa and asked him what kind of fellows these border police were. He shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that they were useless, and volunteered to go to Jask and find out, in the bazaars, what news there was. I let him go, and he borrowed a camel from a friend on the beach and rode away inland, his black lambskin fez disappearing among the palms surrounding the ruined sheikh's house.
That afternoon Mr. Scarlett and I enjoyed the luxury of a thoroughly good sleep, lying back in our canvas chairs under the awning outside our cabin until Percy woke us for afternoon tea—tinned milk, bread (stale) buttered with liquid tinned butter, rancid at that.
There was a little sandy cove among the rocks close alongside, so I sent the whole crew ashore there, natives and all. They were soon enjoying themselves to their hearts' content, bathing and skylarking, scrubbing their clothes, drying them on the hot sand, and having a thoroughly good time.
"I'm hanged if I'm going to land at Jask again," I said to myself; but I did go, bawling ashore for someone to bring off the dinghy, and wearing my one respectable flannel suit of "plain clothes"—the very first time I had worn "plain clothes" since joining the Bunder Abbas.
I left Mr. Scarlett in charge; he never wanted to go ashore. He said, quite openly, that he was afraid of meeting Jassim, and felt sure that he would do so sooner or later. He was not a man one could argue with. Once he had made up his mind that something gloomy was going to happen he'd stick to it, and when it didn't happen he would be more certain that something worse still would take its place. This silly business about Jassim and the bracelet was, of course, at the bottom of it all. It seemed so absolutely childish for him to imagine that he would meet the man, or that anyone would remember the beastly thing, after all these years, to say nothing of the fact that whatever poison was left in the fangs after they had bitten those two could not possibly have retained its powers, that I lost patience with him.
I landed, but never intended going near the telegraph station, not by a long chalk. I did not want to be treated like a child by Miss Borsen—you bet I did not—so I wandered off to explore the ruins of that sheikh's house or fort among the palm trees.
It was a great square building with a tower at one corner, built up of red sandy bricks, all rounded by age, and the mortar, or whatever it was which bound them together, so friable and crumbling that I could loosen a brick with the end of a stick in no time. An entrance under the tower (from which the door had long since disappeared) led into a courtyard covered with rubbish, and all round it were the remains of dwelling-rooms, storehouses, and stables. Some still had roofs to them. A great high wall with crumbling battlements and platforms seemed to shut out every trace of breeze and shut in every ray of heat. The place was like an enormous oven. I climbed up some rough brick steps leading towards the battlements and base of the tower and had a good view over the surrounding country.
Beyond a few miserable palm trees was the open narrow piece of flat ground forming the neck of the peninsula. It gradually rose towards the telegraph buildings, and about halfway between—something like three hundred yards from where I stood—-were the line of wire entanglements and the earth breastwork, stretching right across from the rocks under which the Bunder Abbas was anchored to the shore on the other side, where the shamel was still driving white breakers up the beach with a continuous roar.