At last everything was ready. We hove up our rusty cable and slipped out through the cluster of dhows anchored near us. The sun was low, and as I set my course from a tall signal-mast at one corner of the telegraph buildings, the white walls were tinged a rosy red. At the foot of the flagstaff I thought I saw the figures of two women. Risking another snub from the little lady with the yellow hair and grey eyes, I waved my helmet. Sure enough, two white handkerchiefs fluttered for a moment. I smiled, pleased that she had forgiven me. Then the sun sank in a glory of red gold, and off we steamed, whilst I smoked my pipe and watched the lonely telegraph buildings and the sand-hills behind them gradually sink below the horizon. I was so happy that I would not have changed places with all the kings of England from William I—1066—that I could remember. For the first few hours, as we jogged along, a half-moon gave plenty of light; but it set by midnight, and the night was dark, with hardly a breath of wind. Several times dhows glided by noiselessly and mysteriously, with a phosphorescent glow along their water-lines, and each time one passed I felt as excited as a child. I was much too excited to sleep; kept Mr. Scarlett’s watch, and gradually edged to the eastward so as to be about halfway between those two creeks, and five miles or so off the land, at sunrise. That first sunrise—the flood of marvellously changing shades of delicate colours, spreading upwards from behind the Persian mountains—was magical. Even though my thoughts were full of other things, I almost held my breath as I watched it. Away inshore, to the south-east, was the little headland of Kuh-i-Mubarak, with a peculiar-shaped rock (marked on the chart) on its top; and to the north-east was Sheikh Hill and the cliffs which the political agent had sketched for me. Between them the shore and the low sand-hills were, as yet, invisible, and not a sail was in sight. "Well, here we are, Mr. Scarlett," I said with satisfaction, as he came to relieve me after a sound night’s sleep. "We’re just where I wanted to be. We’ll go and have a look at that creek leading to Bungi." In half an hour we had shoved the _Bunder Abbas_ within a few hundred yards of the foot of Sheikh Hill, with its old dilapidated fort perched on top, and some white-robed figures squatting on the rocks outside it. I went right in, almost under the high cliffs on the opposite side of the little bay, until the mouth of the creek came in view, with a number of native boats drawn up on the sand, and, far inland, the tops of a few palm trees.