If you had seen us being pulled inshore in that tiny dinghy to join my first command you would have laughed. The dinghy’s stern was nearly level with the water, and her bows so cocked up in the air that Mr. Scarlett had to creep for’ard to "trim the dish". As we gradually drew nearer the shore, I noticed a weird odour in the air. "What’s that?" I asked the bluejacket, sniffing it in. "All them Arab or Persh’un places smell like that, sir," he said. "You’ll not notice it in a week’s time." I sucked it in through my nose. At last I had come to the edge of things, and cut myself adrift from civilization. It was grand, and I felt as happy as a bird—and looked like one, too, I expect, perched as I was on the top of my two cases. "That’s ’er, sir," the bluejacket said presently, jerking his chin over his shoulder. Then I saw the _Bunder Abbas_ for the first time. She and I were to have many exciting experiences together during the next few months. As I saw her then she looked draggled to a degree. Her sides were a positive disgrace—paint off in large patches; her awnings were dirty and badly spread on bent, crazy-looking stanchions; and her rusty unpainted cable hung drearily out of a most disreputable hawse-pipe. In her bows, under the awning, there was a gun, in a dirty canvas cover—a six-pounder I guessed—and aft two Maxims were cocked up at different angles, in the most slovenly manner. Their water-jackets, which should have been so bright, were painted a beastly mud colour, and from the muzzle of one dangled a bunch of green bananas. "Your own mother won’t know you in a week’s time, my sweetheart," I chuckled to myself, as the bluejacket tugged at one oar and twisted the dinghy alongside. I swung myself aboard, to be met by a bearded petty officer with a shifty, crafty face, who saluted me about a dozen times in the first two minutes. Five or six disreputable-looking sailors peered round the corner of the engine-room casings to take stock of me, and some lascars sitting jabbering round a stew-pot took no notice whatever. I looked round. The deck was littered with rubbish; men’s clothes were stretched on it everywhere—to dry; burnt matches and cigarette ends lay in every corner.