Whenever one sees dead and wounded brought back by the untouched men who have been fighting alongside them, one cannot help thinking queer thoughts, and casting enquiring glances at the survivors to see what qualities they have which spared them. I must admit that I have never yet noticed anything particularly noble about those who have escaped. Since those gun-running days I have seen much fighting and many killed and wounded, and the untouched have generally been cursing something or somebody, giving relief to the strain on their nerves by cursing hard. Thoughts take longer to write than to think, so they don’t, in actual practice, waste much time. We were obliged to take every heavy weight out of the cutter to prevent her sinking, and then tried to stop the bullet holes below the water line. Webster, the corporal of marines, was as handy with the medicine chest and its bandages as he was with anything else I ever saw him try his hands on. In half an hour he had made the wounded chaps as comfortable as it was possible for them to be. Percy, too, was in his element bringing them water, tinned milk, and coffee. He was like a dog in his admiration for white men. If he had had a tail he would have wagged it off that morning. Until that cutter was safe I did not care how many rifles the Afghans took out of the dhow in our absence; but directly she was fairly watertight I left her at anchor with the dinghy, Moore, the timid Goanese carpenter, and a couple of hands, to carry on repairs, and steamed inshore again. I kept wide of the cliffs (from which a terrific fire burst out) until the beach and the dhow herself came in full view. The shore was again alive with Afghans and their camels. Through my glasses I could see sacks of rifles being thrown from the dhow on to the sand, snatched up by eager men, and rapidly packed on the camels’ backs. A long string of heavily-laden camels was already disappearing behind the sand-hills. But I was not going to worry about them or Afghans. I was going to set that dhow on fire with my shells. At twelve hundred yards I opened fire. "At the dhow!" I shouted to Mr. Scarlett. "Don’t worry about people." Her woodwork began flying, and I knew that the shells were bursting inside her. It was only a question of time—the people aboard and close to her had vanished at the first shell—and presently smoke began to pour from her hatches. We cheered at this—those of us on deck working the gun, Griffiths at the wheel, and poor old Popple Opstein supporting himself against the deck rails. The rest I had sent down below under cover.