'Darling,' he said again now, as she held to his lips a cooling drink that she had brought into the cabin with her, 'darling, I can tell you in half-a-dozen sentences or less----' 'No,' she said. 'No; not now. To-morrow, when you have slept----' 'Yes, now. Why, dearest, I am well! I could take the middle watch to-night if necessary, or--or--do anything that a sailor may be called on to do. And as for finding me in that dhow, why, it's the simplest thing on earth--or the waters. Listen. The _Briseus_, as you would have learnt by that telegram I sent you if you had ever received it, was suddenly ordered to join the Cape Squadron--dhow-catching. And I can tell you we were not so very long before the game began, since by the time we were abreast of Kilwy--which is the southern limit of the legal slave trade--we fell in with twelve dhows, one of them being our friend from which I was rescued by your people. And you may depend we were after them like lightning, while beginning to ply them with shell and shot from our little gun forward. They scattered, of course, though some got hit and lay disabled on the water, while I went off in the whaler with her crew to attack one that seemed badly knocked about. The one in which I was when found by you.' 'The horror!' exclaimed Bella, with a pretty shudder. 'No, no; don't call her that, because, after all, I owe my life to her.' 'Well, the angel!' exclaimed Bella now, with sudden change. 'Though I don't altogether know that the captain meant to save me----' 'The wretch! I'm glad he's dead.' Gilbert laughed at these variations in Bella's mental temperature. Then he continued. 'They are artful--incredibly artful--in these dhows. They will let our pinnaces or whalers or any other of the ship's boats come alongside, then, all of a sudden, they cut their lee halliards, and down comes their great sail over us, enveloping the boat and all in it, just as if it was in a net or a bag.' 'Ah!' gasped Bella. 'And that's not all. When you are caught like that, they have another pleasing little way of firing at you from above through the canvas, so that you are being shot down while, all the time, you have no chance of escape.' 'Oh!' exclaimed Bella. 'To think of it! Ah, the wretches.' 'They do, Bella. Fortunately, however, this one couldn't do it, being disabled, and she had, therefore, come up to the wind with hardly any way on her. This was all right for us, as I meant to board, so as we came alongside each other we hooked on to her anchor cable, which was hanging pretty low down, and we should have got on board, too, only at that moment the dhow gave a lurch which sent the whaler half-seas under, and I got a blow on the head which knocked me insensible----' 'Oh, Gilbert! That wound on your head!'