"It does seem precious hard," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "These hundred and thirty or more camels are not the slightest use to them; they dare not take them inland to sell, and those Arab chaps are certain to wipe out every man of them. But what can I do? I can’t stay here for ever." I suggested that he should let them have some of the captured rifles. "They won’t know how to use them," he said; "they’ll only shoot each other." However, he changed his mind next morning, for as I weighed anchor he signalled across: "Am sending fifty rifles and two thousand rounds of ammunition to the village ". If the inoffensive, childlike villagers would only learn to use them properly, and would guard that gap night and day, they would be safe; but—I knew they would not. They were simply fishermen; they could not spare men from the boats; and after the first few days had passed without anything happening they would imagine themselves safe, or, still more likely, never take any precautions whatsoever, considering it wrong to interfere with "fate". Just as the _Bunder Abbas_ was shoving off, a native boat came paddling furiously from shore. I stopped my engines, and it came alongside with a couple of sheep—a parting present from my old head-man. Sending back a message of thanks, and dragging them aboard, I went ahead again, wound my way through that extraordinary channel in the cliffs to the open sea, and by sunset found myself once more anchored in Muscat harbour. It was too late to report myself to the political agent that night, so I went next morning. He heard my news with great satisfaction, said very nice things about my part of the "show", and expressed the opinion that the loss of the valuable caravan would be such a blow to the inland tribes that the gun-running trade would be dead on that part of the coast for many months. He agreed with me that something ought to be done for the villagers, but shook his head when I suggested that the "_B.A._" might be spared to protect them for a few weeks. "Can’t anything be done for them?" I asked anxiously. "The most I can do," he said, "is to let the local Arab camel dealers know that they have all those camels to sell—almost for the asking. Once they have got rid of them there won’t be so much temptation for the Bedouins to attack them." He did this, and during the afternoon six or seven large trading buggalows glided out of harbour. I hoped that they were off to my village, and, one passing close to the "_B.A._", Mr. Scarlett hailed her to know where she was going. "Yes," he nodded, after much shouting backward and forward; "they are all on their way there as quickly as they can. They aren’t going to let the chance slip; they don’t expect those Bedouins will leave the camels there many days." Poor devils! Precious little profit would they make out of their assistance to us, and precious little would those traders give them.