During these first weeks Mr. Scarlett and Jaffa, between them, put me up to all the tricks of the gun-running business. What one didn’t know of the Arabs’ dodges for concealing rifles the other did; so I became quite an expert, theoretically. One evening when it was fairly cool—after a regular furnace of a day—Mr. Scarlett became communicative. We had been speaking of boarding suspected dhows. "Now take the case, sir, of a dhow flying the Turkish flag. You steam up to her; down goes her sail; over you bob to her in the dinghy with Jaffa, and tell the nakhoda to show his papers. You dare not board until you have seen them. He hands them down to you. You look through them—written in Turkish, English, and Hindustani; all three probably—and so long as they are in order, whether you know for certain that she’s brim-full of rifles or whether you only suspect that she is, you dare not board and search her. "I remember," he said, "running up against a fine dhow one morning—I was away in the old _Pigeon’s_ cutter then—a long time since. We ran her down, headed her off till she couldn’t get away, felt sure that she was going to be a fair prize, and yelled "Hallib! Hallib!" until she lowered her sails. And that reminds me, sir; never go alongside any dhow until she’s lowered her sail. They Arabs have a nasty trick of waiting for you to come alongside, and then lowering the sail so that it and its big yard drops into the boat and smothers it. I’ve known ’em carry away a cutter’s mast that way. Whilst you are helpless under the sail they pot at you, hoist it up again, and sail away. I’ve been ’had’ like that myself once. "Just you see that sail properly lowered and then make them hold up the halyards to show you that they are ’unbent’, because they are as nippy as sharks a-hoisting it again. "Well, as I was saying, we were as keen as mosquitoes over that ’ere dhow, but, as we caught hold of her with our boat-hooks, she hoisted Turkish colours and we dared not board her. The nakhoda, grinning at us, leant over her side and handed down his papers. These were in perfect order, so we no more dared board her than we dared stop the mail-steamer. What riled us chiefly was the brazen-faced way they did things. The cargo was put down as one hundred cases of champagne, consigned to a dirty little Persian village of about twenty miserable fishing-huts. We knew it well, we did, before—and after. We felt jolly well ’had’. We were as certain as ’eggs is eggs’ that she was chock-full of rifles and ammunition, but they were as safe where they were as if they’d been on top of the Eiffel Tower. "The lieutenant in charge of us cursed the Arab nakhoda, and called his ancestors dogs and sons of dogs, hoping he knew enough Hindustani to understand. Then off we had to shove.