"That was just what the skipper was waiting for. He opened fire with our four-inch guns, keeping it up from four o’clock that afternoon till six, and setting a good many of the dhows on fire. Just before the sun went down, along came the old _Sphinx_, paddling furiously, and chipped in with her old-fashioned guns, till neither of us could see a thing to aim at, except flames occasionally. The whole bay was a mass of smoke from the dhows we had set on fire with our shells. "It was a fine sight as the sun set behind the great mountains inshore, and the dark shadows of them came racing across the plain and the harbour, showing up the flames still more brightly. "If you ever cruise along that coast don’t miss that sight—the sight of those shadows as the sun sinks behind the mountains," Mr. Scarlett interrupted his yarn to tell us. "Well, all that night we and the _Sphinx_ fired occasionally to keep the Arabs’ nerves on edge, and made all ready to send in every boat we possessed, at daybreak, to see what we could do. "That was the longest day’s work I ever did, and the worst—the worst," Mr. Scarlett hissed out, apparently waking up and altering his voice, as if he had been somebody else telling the yarn before, or as if he had suddenly turned over a fresh page in a book he was reading, remembered the terrible ending, and wanted to shut it up. The Baron and I almost jumped out of our chairs. "Yes, the worst. My God! it was the worst." He jumped to his feet, looked ashamed of himself, sat down, and went on to tell us in a strained voice, as though the ending was too terrible, how the crews of the _Pigeon_ and _Sphinx_ had pulled ashore in their boats, like midges round a horde of elephants. He said that two of the bigger dhows, placed end on end, would be nearly as big as the _Victory_. We did not believe him. He told us how, as one boat would clap alongside a huge towering dhow, her demoralized crew would clamber down the other side to their boats or jump overboard. The bluejackets had brought tins of paraffin, with which they set on fire each dhow they boarded, adding still further to the terror and disorder, until the crews of all those four hundred odd junks abandoned them and clustered at the edge of the shore, behind the walls of Jassim’s fort, shouting bravely and shooting off their crazy rifles in defiance.