The Parakeet’s voyage to Dunkhot was not swift.  Eight-and-a-half knots was her most economical pace for coal consumption, and at that gait she steamed.  With a reputation to make with his new owners, and two and a-half per cent, commission on all profits, Kettle had developed into a regular glutton for cargo; and the knowledge of men and places which he had so laboriously acquired in former days served him finely.  Three times he got doles of cargo at good stiff freights at points where few other men would have dreamed of looking.  He was an ideal man for the master of an ocean tramp.  He was exactly honest; he had a world of misfortunes behind to spur him on; he was quick of decision; and he had developed a nose for cargo, and a knack of extorting it from merchants, that were little short of miraculous.  And, in fact, if things went on as they had started, he stood a very good chance of making 50 per cent, on the Parakeet’s capital for the voyage, and so earning promotion to one of the firm’s better ships.

But though in the many days of his adversity Captain Kettle had never shunned any risks which came in his way, with this new prosperity fresh and pleasant at his feet, he was beginning to tell himself that risks were foolish things.  He arrived off Dunkhot and rang off his engines, and frowned angrily at the shore.

The town stood on an eminence, snugly walled, and filled with cool, square houses.  At one side, the high minaret of a mosque stood up like a bayonet, and at the other, standing in a ring of garden, was a larger building, which seemed to call itself palace.  There was a small fringe of cultivation beside the walls of the town, and beyond was arid desert, which danced and shimmered under the violent sun.

But all this lay small and far off, like a tiny picture in some huge frame, and showing only through the glass.  A maze of reefs guarded the shore, and tore up the sleek Indian Ocean swells into spouting breakers; and though there was anchorage inside, tenanted indeed by a score of sailing craft, the way to it was openly perilous.  And so for the present the Parakeet lay to, rolling outside the entrance, flying a pilot jack, and waiting developments.

Captain Kettle might have his disquieting thoughts, still outwardly he was cool.  But Mr. Hugh Wenlock was on deck in the sprucest of his apparel, and was visibly anxious and fidgety, as befitted a man who shortly expected to enter into the bonds of matrimony.

A double-ended boat came off presently, manned by naked Arabs, and steered by a man in a white burnous.  She swept up alongside, caught a rope and made fast, and the man in white introduced himself as a pilot.  They are all good Mohammedans down there, or nominally, and so of course there was no question of a clean bill of health.  Islam is not impious enough to check the spread of any disease which Allah may see good to send for its chastening.