"Think, sir?" rejoined Draper, who had served on the East African station before joining the _Mermaid_, and `knew the ropes,' as the saying goes. "I don't think about it at all, sir." "Well, well," said Mr Chisholm, who was a jocular sort of young fellow and never hard on a man, besides which he knew Draper's crusty way, "tell us what you know, then." "Very good, sir," replied our old shellback of a coxswain. "Then, I knows, sir, the monsoon's on the shift, and we're agoin' to have a blow from the nor'ard afore dark." "What do you advise our doing, coxen?" "Adwise, sir?" repeated Draper, as usual, after Mr Chisholm, his habit always when asked a question. "If I was you, sir, I'd up stick and run for it, sir, to the nearest port." "The nearest port on our lee is Zanzibar," said Mr Chisholm. "I suppose you mean to loo'ard, Draper?" "Aye, aye, sir, I means to loo'ard." "Then you advise our putting up the helm and running for Zanzibar?" "Aye." The cutter was rigged with a dipping lug and a spritsail; so, no sooner had crusty old Draper given his laconic answer to Mr Chisholm, than the latter sang out to Larrikins, who was in the bows. "Look out there forrud!" he cried. "Stand by to dip!" This is considered one of the smartest things in boat-sailing, the men having to be specially stationed for the purpose; but, as we had been living in the cutter now for three months, and had experience of her under any and every change of wind and sail, the operation did not occasion much difficulty to us. Larrikins, who was bowman, pressed out the fore part of the lug as soon as the yard was half lowered, while two other hands gathered the sheet of the sail forwards, and passed it round the mast as soon as Draper had put the helm up; when I and another chap who was aft with me, unhooked the sheet to port and then rehooked it to the starboard side, which was to windward now on the cutter's head coming round, as she went off on the other tack. Gathering way in a minute or two as we eased off the sheet of the lug, the cutter went ahead at a great pace, making much better weather of it running before the wind, as was the case now, than she had lately, before we came about, when beating up to Bagamoyo; skimming over the broken surface of the sea, her bows and the deadwood of her keel forwards being clean out of the water sometimes as she jumped from wave to wave, and sending the spray she threw up as she came down bash on the top of some billow, right inboard, wetting us to the skin, and leaving a wake behind her like a millrace. We were steering almost due north now; and, looking ahead under the leech of the lugsail, I could see that the clouds we had observed before banked up on the horizon had crept up towards the zenith, spreading out laterally on either side, until half of the heavens was obscured. Then, all of a sudden, the wind dropped, as if done with a turn of the hand.