“The wind soon freshened again, blowing fiercely in gusts over the rugged top of Muscat Island, but gradually sunk as the atmosphere cleared; the stars showing themselves, here and there, in patches of clear sky, before the day dawned. Then, as the sun rose behind the lofty rocks to the east, the wind failed altogether, and it seemed fast growing as hot as before, while a vague notion got into my head, looking at the Arab soldiers on the poop, that the events of the past night, terrible as they seemed, were now but the ghosts of things that had been. “A sort of calm, too, prevailed in the ship, as the heavy swells began to subside in the cove. The cook was in his galley, attending to his usual duties, the blue smoke rising from the funnel, straight as a pine tree, half-way to the top. The people hung in knots about the forecastle, apparently waiting for eight bells to summon them to breakfast, while the mates stood together on the larboard gangway, with a glass among them, examining the shore and the wreck of the Arab frigate, now firmly wedged in between two precipitous rocks. “The black dog of a eunuch, secure, as it seemed, in the shadow of his master, walked the poop with as proud a stride as if his foot was already on our necks—not a muscle of his grim, relentless face moving beneath his showy turban, flecked, as it was, with blood, while, as I met his deadly, sinister glance every time he turned, I fancied to myself—as, indeed, I had done on former occasions—what a hell of secrets must lie hidden, from all but God’s eye, in the black pit of his soul. The pagan wretch was said to delight in shedding human blood, and in every variety of torture, having been cognizant of many acts of atrocious cruelty in the time of the old Imaum. His only qualities were a brutish devotion to the sultan, and a species of slow, long-breathed cunning, of which report said Syed Ben Seeyd had often availed himself in penetrating the secret designs of his enemies.