The head-man was along in a jiffy, bringing another sheep with him. I hardly recognized him for a moment in a green turban and a scarlet burnous with a flaming scarlet belt, into which he had stuck silver-mounted daggers (the green turban I found out afterwards was the one Jassim had lost that awful night, and I remembered that he was not wearing it when he followed his wounded son through the gap). Across his knees he had one of the rifles we had given him—each man in the boat had one—and he was treating it as if it was a baby or something alive. When he stepped on board, all smiles and friendliness, he brought it with him, and kept on patting it affectionately, shaking a bag slung from his shoulder by a piece of coarse string, and smiling like a big baby when the cartridges inside it rattled. He was vastly amusing in his new finery. He told Jaffa, for my edification, that "men of Kalat al Abeid no fish—so much good things no work any more—Arab trader from Muscat bring so much food—dates, rice, cloth, beads, bracelets for women—brass cooking-pots; never want nothing no more. No fear Bedouins—taffenk—fishenk[#]—kill them all." [#] Rifles, cartridges. Jaffa soon found out that, as I thought, he never bothered to keep even a few men posted in the gap in the mountains. "It was absurd to keep them there in the daytime: surely they could see the Bedouins coming down from the ravine and shoot them; and as for at night, why, everyone knew that devils and horned dragons breathing flame came and went through that gap during the dark hours." If he had spent the night with us up there, whilst the _Intrepid’s_ shells were bursting, he might have had some foundation for his yarn. At any rate, not a man of the village dared stay there after dark, and it was useless work trying to chaff the old chap out of his superstitions. He certainly had not seen any devils or horned dragons breathing flame—no one alive had; but their fathers had told them about them, and that was good enough for him. "Sometimes hear big noise of wind rushing through the gap," Jaffa interpreted, as the old man evidently tried to back his superstition with some tangible facts. "Well, ask him about the leopards. Tell him I want to go there and shoot some," I told Jaffa. He was quite willing to talk about them, but did not want to give me the trouble of climbing all that way. He patted his rifle, pointed to those of his men, and Jaffa explained, without a smile on his face: "The white sea-lord shall recline in the shade of my hut whilst I and my men go and shoot leopard—bring back plenty skins, and plenty claws to make necklace for white sea-lord." "But the white sea-lord jolly well wants to do the shooting himself," I laughed, "and to-morrow too." When this was interpreted to the old man—I must call him sheikh, now that he was so important—he smiled, as though he thought me rather a mad ass.