Mr. Scarlett was so anxious for me to try to get a "move on" Mr. Fisher about burning the huts and levelling the breastworks that I went ashore later in the day and again urged him to do this. Nothing I could say could make him realize the necessity. "I am certain they’ll all have cleared away home by to-morrow morning. We’ll wait till then. Besides, I dare not overwork the coolies. If I do they will desert," was all I could get out of him. I suggested that it might be advisable to send Mrs. Fisher and Miss Borsen on board the _Bunder Abbas_ for the night; but he declined for the same reason as he declined everything else—that he expected the Afghans to disappear before morning. "Do you know that you are responsible for much of this?" he said, as he walked backwards and forwards with me outside the loopholed wall. "Responsible! What do you mean?" "Why," he said, "they all know of the loss of that huge caravan over on the Muscat coast—the one you and the _Intrepid_ captured between you. It they had got those rifles and all that ammunition through to the Indian frontier there would have been another ’rising’ there. They were only waiting for them before giving the signal to the tribes along a hundred miles of the frontier to pour down through the passes and lay waste the valleys and murder the tribes living there under British protection. They all know this, and to-day they have been trying to revenge themselves for their lost opportunity. I’ve seen among the killed several men I know: powerful sheikhs, Arabs from the other coast, leading men from Afghan villages. It is a bigger business than I thought at first. "However, they will probably be gone by the morning, and you may pride yourself that but for your capturing that big caravan the other day, the Indian Government would have had another little war on its hands. "Oh," he added, "I’d almost forgotten! I had a wire from Muscat. The _Intrepid_ has gone off up the coast after some more arms." I went back to the _Bunder Abbas_ rather elated at the idea that I had helped to stop a little war, and remembered what Commander Duckworth had said: "They ought to do something for you." It was rather early to expect promotion, but it would be grand if it came. "Can’t budge him," I told Mr. Scarlett. "He still thinks they’ll have gone back home by the morning. The _Intrepid_ has gone after some more arms so we shan’t be disturbed till she gets back. That’s one good bit of news."