CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. BOARDING THE SLAVE DHOW. "On deck, there!" shouted out the lookout-man again, almost before the sound of Lieutenant Dabchick's last yawn had died away in the distance, like a groan or its echo. "There's a whole fleet o' dhows a-creeping up under the lee of the land and running before the wind to the north'ard, sir!" This stopped Mr Dabchick's yawns and made him open his sleepy eyes pretty wide, I can tell you! "A fleet of dhows, lookout-man!" he cried, fully awake at last, not only in his own person, but as regarded the responsibility attaching to him should he unhappily let our prey escape and so foil his captain's carefully arranged plan. "Are you certain, Adams?" "Not a doubt of it, sir," replied the captain of the foretop, in an assured tone that expressed his confidence in his own statement. "They're Arab dhows sure enough, sir. One--two--three; and, ay, there is two more on 'em jist rounding the p'int--that makes five on 'em, sir, all bearing to the north as fast as they can go, with slack sheets and the breeze dead astern, which they are bringing up with them. They're right off our weather beam, now, sir." "The devil!" ejaculated Lieutenant Dabchick, in his flurry using a stronger expression than he would probably have done had `old Hankey Pankey' been on the quarter-deck, rushing into the chart-house on the bridge and snatching up a telescope, which he brought to bear on the horizon in the direction indicated by Adams in the foretop above, whose point of vantage, of course, gave him a wider range of view. "On our weather beam, you say?" "Ay, ay, sir," roared back the lookout; "they're right abreast of our forrud funnel now, sir." Mr Dabchick's hand shook so much from excitement that he could not hold the glass steady; so, propping it up athwart the stanchion at the weather end of the bridge, and sprawling out his legs to give him a good purchase, he worked the telescope about till he at last spotted the objects Adams had seen. "By the Lord Harry!" exclaimed the lieutenant, "you are right, Adams. I must send down and tell the captain at once." With that, he hailed the midshipman of the watch and despatched him with the news to Captain Hankey's cabin aft; while at the same time he rang the engine-room gong, and shouted down through the voice-tube to tell them below to `stand by,' as probably we would want steam up in a very short time; directing also the coxswains of the boats alongside to make ready, as well as passing the word forward for the boatswain's mates and the drummer and bugler to be handy when wanted. This done, all his orders having been issued and executed in less time than I take to tell of it, Mr Dabchick resumed his interrupted, if monotonous, task of walking up and down the bridge; stopping whenever he had to slew round, at the end of his promenade, to take another squint at the dhows, and warning Adams, though that worthy needed no such injunction, to `keep his eye on them.'