"However, we did search them, and we did find rifles, which meant ’Good-bye’ for that dhow and ’chokey’ for her crew. They found that trick not worth the risk, these people being generally law-abiding people (more or less), simply tempted every now and then to make a larger profit by carrying a few rifles. They weren’t what you might call reg’lar hands at the business. "And there’s another thing they do, sir; on top of the firewood they often load a small cargo of their dried fish, thinking the British sailor won’t stomach the smell of it. Ugh! the stink from some of those dhows! Why, we sometimes never got rid of the smell of it for weeks. "You never heard about the mail-steamers—the Royal British Mail—carrying rifles themselves, I suppose, sir?" he asked, a little less gloomily as the incongruity of it appealed to him. "Why, sir, for one whole six months the mail-steamer brought up regular consignments of sugar from Karachi to Bushire and landed them there for a respectable firm of merchants. One fine day a careless chap at a winch, who was lowering a cask of sugar into a lighter, let it drop. The cask was stove in, and instead of sugar they found half a dozen rifles stowed in pieces, packed in saw-dust. That was an eye-opener, I can tell you. The mail-steamers don’t carry so many casks of sugar now as they did then," Mr. Scarlett finished, smiling sardonically. Another night he became talkative and began: "You remember that chap who fired at us—the first time we shoved our nose under the cliffs at Sheikh Hill? I told you for certain he was an Afghan and couldn’t possibly help firing his rifle at a white man. Well, sir, they often send one or two of these fellows across to the Arabian coast in the empty dhows, just to see that the rifles are brought to the proper place. You can always tell if there’s one of these chaps aboard a dhow when you come along to search her, because he’ll fire at you for a dead ’cert’. What we did was to make the crew line the side nearest us, after they’d lowered the sail and unbent the halyards. Our sportsman, the Afghan (or Afghans) dar’n’t fire then for fear of hitting his friends, or had to climb up where we could see him, which didn’t give him much of a chance, we being standing by waiting for him. Still, he didn’t mind being riddled with bullets so long as he got in a shot at us English, more especially if he’d hit any of us. "The only thing in this world he does fear and does mind is the sea. If there’s a bit of a lop running you may bet your life that Mr. Afghan is as sea-sick as a dog, and you’ll find him coiled up like a cat somewhere under the poop, without a kick left in him. He’d give anyone, white man or no white man, all he possessed, if he’d only kill him right out—that’s when he’s sea-sick. "He’s a terrible bad sailor, is the Afghan!" Mr. Scarlett said reflectively; "that’s the only good point about him except being such a born fighter."