Shard lay a course of South by West and they did ten knots that day, the next day they did seven or eight and Shard hove to.  Here he intended to stop, they had huge supplies of fodder on board for the oxen, for his men he had a pig or so, plenty of poultry, several sacks of biscuits and ninety-eight oxen (for two were already eaten), and they were only twenty miles from water.  Here he said they would stay till folks forgot their past, someone would invent something or some new thing would turn up to take folks’ minds off them and the ships he had sunk:  he forgot that there are men who are well paid to remember.

Half way between him and the oasis he established a little depot where he buried his water-barrels.  As soon as a barrel was empty he sent half a dozen men to roll it by turns to the depot.  This they would do at night, keeping hid by day, and next night they would push on to the oasis, fill the barrel and roll it back.  Thus only ten miles away he soon had a store of water, unknown to the thirstiest native of Africa, from which he could safely replenish his tanks at will.  He allowed his men to sing and even within reason to light fires.  Those were jolly nights while the rum held out; sometimes they saw gazelles watching them curiously, sometimes a lion went by over the sand, the sound of his roar added to their sense of the security of their ship; all round them level, immense lay the Sahara:  “This is better than an English prison,” said Captain Shard.

And still the dead calm lasted, not even the sand whispered at night to little winds; and when the rum gave out and it looked like trouble, Shard reminded them what little use it had been to them when it was all they had and the oxen wouldn’t look at it.

And the days wore on with singing, and even dancing at times, and at nights round a cautious fire in a hollow of sand with only one man on watch they told tales of the sea.  It was all a relief after arduous watches and sleeping by the guns, a rest to strained nerves and eyes; and all agreed, for all that they missed their rum, that the best place for a ship like theirs was the land.

This was in Latitude 23 North, Longitude 4 East, where, as I have said, a ship’s broadside was heard for the first time and the last.  It happened this way.

They had been there several weeks and had eaten perhaps ten or a dozen oxen and all that while there had been no breath of wind and they had seen no one:  when one morning about two bells when the crew were at breakfast the lookout man reported cavalry on the port side.  Shard who had already surrounded his ship with sharpened stakes ordered all his men on board, the young trumpeter who prided himself on having picked up the ways of the land, sounded “Prepare to receive cavalry”.  Shard sent a few men below with pikes to the lower port-holes, two more aloft with muskets, the rest to the guns, he changed the “grape” or “canister” with which the guns were loaded in case of surprise, for shot, cleared the decks, drew in ladders, and before the cavalry came within range everything was ready for them.  The oxen were always yoked in order that Shard could manoeuvre his ship at a moment’s notice.