Two or three days later the _Merlin_, which reported having had a long chase after the senior officer, going almost as far as Zanzibar and back to Mombassa before she picked him up, returned to Malindi, in company with the _Bullfinch_, another small cruiser attached to the East African squadron. Captain Oliver also brought orders from our chief, that parties of bluejackets were to be landed to protect Malindi from any hostile attack of the Arabs, while he with the admiral and all the force on the station were busy preparing an expedition on a grand scale, to drive the Somalis altogether out of the British protectorate, and so prevent any further attempt on their part to invade the country for some time to come. These instructions were acted on immediately by `old Hankey Pankey' to the letter, parties of seamen and marines from each ship in turn landing and patrolling the outskirts of the settlement, in front of which our little fleet of three vessels was anchored; and so we `marked time,' so to speak, for the next few months, waiting for the ships belonging to the West African squadron to come up with the admiral himself, as not until then would we be able to resume active operations against the foe, whose defeat of us before their stockade at Wooromoloo we were burning to avenge. "Lor', Tom," said Larrikins to me, expressing the current feeling of all on board the _Mermaid_, "I'd die happy, s'help me, if I could only pot that there bloomin' Arab thief Abdalah, him we see'd shoot poor little Dabby. They told us, Tom, you reck'lect t'other day over in the nigger town there when we was on sentry go, him were the chief of the gang, and were boastin' o' killin' our h'officers and makin' all on us cut and run. Lor', I'd give a year's pay to settle that there beggar's hash!" At last one morning, when we were pretty well tired of this forced inaction, a despatch boat came up from Mombassa, bringing orders from the admiral, who had arrived there in his flagship, accompanied by several gunboats and other vessels, nearly all the crews of which had been landed. The admiral informed our captain that he was about to proceed inland through the province of Teita with this formidable column; and that he, `old Hankey Pankey,' was to assemble as strong a force as he could muster from the ships under his command and with a second column thus formed he was to start from Malindi and work in a south-westerly direction, when the two bodies would meet, completely hemming in the Arabs. `Old Hankey Pankey' got us all ashore the same afternoon the admiral's orders came; and, early the next morning, nearly four hundred strong now, just double our former strength, we marched off up country towards the scene of our defeat at the hands of the Somali chieftain Abdalah, on the occasion of our previous trip inland.