“Hauled here by a nigger—­think of it!”

We ordered Brown on board and below, pretty peremptorily.  Lady Saffren Waldon stepped out of the darkness next, holding a rifle and two bandoliers so full of cartridges that she could hardly raise her arms.  We took the load from her, and helped her overside.  Fred took the rifle and succumbed to the hunter’s habit of opening the breach first thing.  It was a German sporting Mauser, with a hair trigger attachment and magazine, as handy and useful a weapon as the heart of man could wish.  He had scarcely snapped the breach to again when a voice we all recognized made the hair rise on my neck.  Fred jumped and raised the rifle.  Will swore softly—­endlessly.

“Gassharrrrammminy!  You men took us for damned fools, didn’t you?  You thought to get away and leave us!  By hell, no!  We go or you stay!  Birds of a feather fly together!  One of you is American—­I am American!  Two of you are English—­I am English, and can prove it!  My friends come with me!”

Fred leveled the rifle at him.

“About face!  Off back to town with you!” he barked.

“Not on your tin-type!” Coutlass yelled.  “I’m no man’s popinjay!  Shoot if you dare, and I’ll spoil the whole game!  Help!  He-e-e-lp!  He-e-e-e-lp!”

The other Greek and the Goanese joined in the shout, the dark man setting up such an ululating screech that the very storm dwindled into second place in comparison.  It was true, the unearthly yelling was carried out over the water, and very likely not a sound of it reached twenty yards inland; but it rattled our nerves, nevertheless.  The skin grew prickly all up and down my backbone, and the men on the chain-gang inside the hull began shouting to know what the matter was.

Will remembered then that he was captain for the day, and made virtue of necessity.

“In with you!” he ordered.  “Quick!”

With a grin that was half-triumph, half-cunning, and wholly glad, Coutlass helped his companions over the bow, and had the civility to stand there with hand outstretched to help us in after him.  We sent him below with his friends, but be came up again and insisted on leaning his weight on the poles with which we began shoving off into deeper water.  It was hard work, for with her human cargo and several hundred gallons of water that had leaked through her gaping seams, the dhow was down several inches.  Her hull had just begun to feel the wind and to rise and fall freely, when a white figure ran screaming down toward the water’s edge and stood there waving to us frantically.

“Leave her!” said Lady Waldon excitedly, clutching my arm.  I was up on the bow, just about to lay the pole along the deck and haul on the halyards.  She spoke very slowly right in my ear.  “That, is my maid Rebecca.  The faithless slut—­”

Coutlass began to shout, trying to pole the dhow back to land single-handed.