On the last day of this cruise, the last morning before we had to return to Muscat for more coal and food, I took the _Bunder Abbas_ into a most marvellous gorge in the cliffs. Just imagine enormous, perpendicular, sea-worn cliffs, eight hundred feet high, with the south-west monsoon swell roaring at their feet, and a cleft, not fifty yards across, cut straight down through them, as by some enormous knife. Into this the "_B.A._" shoved her nose, twisted and turned, with those huge walls on either side, until long after the sea had disappeared and the booming of the breaking swell had ceased. Gradually the walls trended downwards, until a last turn disclosed an inland basin, quite a mile long and nearly as broad. Mangrove trees came down all round it nearly to the water’s edge; what looked like rich grass-land ran up the slopes of the mountains until it faded among the gaunt bare rock; and at one place, where a little stream opened, there was quite a large cluster of huts, with many fishing-boats drawn up on the beach in front of them. I anchored in front of this village—marked on the chart as Kalat al Abeid—lowered the dinghy, and pulled ashore, with Jaffa to interpret, and the three marines (armed with rifles) to do the usual searching. I took my shot-gun, but the head-man—a tall, wizened, old chap with a scarlet sash round his waist and a scarlet turban on his head—as soon as he saw it, shook his head, patted one of the marine’s rifles, and jabbered away excitedly to Jaffa, pointing up to the mountains. Jaffa interpreted: "He say plenty leopard in mountain—come down every night—kill sheep and goats—two nights ago killed a woman. Want you get rifle from ship—go shoot them—want all men go—kill many leopard—he show you where they sleep in daytime." "Right oh, old cock!" I said, sent the dinghy back for another rifle, and hurried away the marines and Jaffa to get their searching done. The villagers were so eager for us to go shooting that they had actually stripped their huts of everything movable, bringing the things outside, so that all we had to do was to stoop down through the low doorway, see that the floor was bare and had not been disturbed lately (no rifles buried there), then back out again and search the next. It was the quaintest sight in the world to see the excited children—little brown naked urchins—staggering out with big clay cooking utensils and brass cooking pots as big as themselves, as happy as the day was long at this new kind of game. One or two huts were so dark inside that we could not see; but the natives tore away some of the palm-leaf roof to let in light, in order that nothing should delay us.