"Our only chance was to catch those rifles on their way to the beach whilst the dhow was unloading, or when they once got there. All we could do was to pull off again and follow her, and it was about all we could do to keep up with her until she reached her blessed village just before dark. "We’d been there a week before—for water—so we knew what it was like. If there had been thirty half-starved fishermen then I’d be overshooting the mark; now the beach was crowded with rascally Afghans and their camels, and no sooner did the dhow drop her anchor, close in to the beach, than those cases of champagne—about five feet long they were, each holding a dozen fat rifles we felt sure—were bundled into boats. "We had a Gardner machine-gun in our bows, and opened fire with that and our old Martin Henrys; but there must have been a couple of hundred Afghans letting rip at us, so we had to pull out of range and watch those cases of champagne being lashed on the camels’ backs until it was too dark to see anything more. At any rate, all those rifles got ashore, and you can guess what they were used for later on—for potting at British Tommies trying to keep order on the Indian frontier. "Don’t you go away with the idea that we English don’t have a hand in the game," Mr. Scarlett continued gloomily. "Why, sir, many’s the time I’ve seen captured rifles with the old ’Tower’ mark on them, showing that they’d been made in England—old-fashioned Army rifles some of them, others not. And the tricks they’re up to! My word, they are as artful as a bagful of monkeys! I’ve helped search a couple of hundred dhows or more in my time, and that’s taught me a thing or two."