to kill herself by tearing it off her own arm, and if her courage failed her a slave stood by to do it, and the two would die. The slave was not likely to fail her, for to die by 'the twin death' was supposed to be a sure way of attaining Paradise, and not many slaves ever thought that they would have the chance to get there.

"Some of this my father told me, and the rest, and many other things besides, I learnt afterwards from the Arabs up and down the coast.

"I saw it next eight or nine years afterwards. I was an ordinary seaman in a gunboat lying off Muscat, and, happening to be ashore one afternoon, with nothing to do, I noticed that there was quite a crowd of natives gathered on the shore.

"They told me that the Sultan of Khamia was just going to embark on his way to Mecca, so I stopped to see him, knowing that he was the worst brigand and pirate in the whole of the Gulf, and wishing to see what kind of chap he was.

"Presently he came down with a crowd of attendants to guard him—a fine-looking fellow he was—and after him followed some hooded cages or palanquins. Inside these, hidden from view, were, I knew, his favourite wives, accompanying him as far as Jeddah. Out of the first stretched a beautiful arm, and on it was that snake bracelet.

"I half expected to see it, and recognized it at once. You should have seen that crowd of natives give way and fall back. Everyone knew what it was, and what it meant. They edged away as if it was the devil himself.

"The closed cages were taken on board a lighter; the lighter was towed out to a little steamer rolling in the mouth of the harbour between the two old Portuguese forts, and I soon forgot all about the bracelet.

"Five years afterwards fate brought me to the Gulf again. I was a petty officer in the gunboat Pigeon then, and everywhere we went we heard the name of Jassim, the now Khan of Khamia—the absolute despot of the south-western part of the Persian Gulf, the head of the Jowassim tribes of slavers and pirates, and the terror of the seas. Not a dhow dared leave any port without first paying tribute to him, and the tales of his atrocities made our blood boil with rage; because he was not satisfied with being master of the Gulf, but he'd swoop down on coast towns, demand tribute from them, and, if there was any resistance—even hesitation in paying—he would kill every man, woman, and child in ways so callously brutal that you could not imagine a human being capable of inventing them.

"His latest exploit had been to capture the whole fleet of pearl-fishing dhows and trading baggalows[#] inside Muscat harbour. He filled them with his rascally followers—Bedouins chiefly—and thought himself strong enough to tackle the English.

[#] Baggalow=large ocean-going dhow.

"We soon heard that he was preparing to seize the pearl-fishing dhows which were then fitting out at Bahrein—under the English flag and the English guns of the fort there—to sail for the pearl banks, down south.

"The Pigeon and the old Sphinx were therefore ordered to search for Mr. Jassim and teach him a lesson.

"Well, after dodging in and out of the bays in that rocky coast, shoving our nose in, finding nothing, and shunting out again, we found him, one morning, anchored at the head of a shallow bay with all his fleet.

"Four hundred and twenty-two dhows we counted, their sloping masts and yards showing up like a forest against the shore. Every one of them was flaunting the red flag with a white border, the flag of the Jowassims. The whole place was a-flutter with them.

"At the top of the bay Jassim had built himself a fort, and lived there, we found out afterwards, in great style, with his harem, sheikhs' sons to wait on him, gold plates to eat off, and everything simply tiptop.

"Four hundred odd dhows were there, manned for the most part by dare-devil Bedouins, with a fair sprinkling of Beni Ghazril, Ballash, and Ahmed tribes—all low-caste tribes not too keen on fighting. Armed they were with old smooth bores—nine-pounders, there or thereabouts—and the little Pigeon was equal to taking on the lot if she could only have fetched in close enough; which she couldn't, as she drew too much water. We had to anchor five miles away from these dhows—five miles if a yard.

"Out came a sheikh or a khan—some big swell—to say that Jassim was only waiting for a change of wind to come out and eat us up. As it was blowing a steady shamel (you two gentlemen will know what that is before you've been out here long), blowing right into the bay, and not likely to ease down for two or three days, we didn't trouble about them trying to escape. Well, the skipper sent that sheikh chap back with a flea in his ear, and presently Jassim himself came along in a grand barge, flying the Turkish flag—like his cheek!—and as cool as anything comes up the side and gives our skipper two hours to clear out of it.

"The cheek of the man amused the skipper, who merely took him aft into his cabin, kept him there for two hours, talking and drinking coffee, showed him his watch and that the two hours had gone by, told him he would have hanged him had he not been flying the Turkish flag, and sent him back to his fleet.

"The tide rising presently, we chanced our luck and moved in a bit closer. Directly we moved, those dhows, hundreds of them, let rip at us with their old pop-guns, the shot plunking into the water half-way, and not even the 'ricos' reaching us.

"That was just what the skipper was waiting for. He opened fire with our four-inch guns, keeping it up from four o'clock that afternoon till six, and setting a good many of the dhows on fire. Just before the sun went down, along came the old Sphinx, paddling furiously, and chipped in with her old-fashioned guns, till neither of us could see a thing to aim at, except flames occasionally. The whole bay was a mass of smoke from the dhows we had set on fire with our shells.

"It was a fine sight as the sun set behind the great mountains inshore, and the dark shadows of them came racing across the plain and the harbour, showing up the flames still more brightly.

"If you ever cruise along that coast don't miss that sight—the sight of those shadows as the sun sinks behind the mountains," Mr. Scarlett interrupted his yarn to tell us.

"Well, all that night we and the Sphinx fired occasionally to keep the Arabs' nerves on edge, and made all ready to send in every boat we possessed, at daybreak, to see what we could do.

"That was the longest day's work I ever did, and the worst—the worst," Mr. Scarlett hissed out, apparently waking up and altering his voice, as if he had been somebody else telling the yarn before, or as if he had suddenly turned over a fresh page in a book he was reading, remembered the terrible ending, and wanted to shut it up.

The Baron and I almost jumped out of our chairs.

"Yes, the worst. My God! it was the worst." He jumped to his feet, looked ashamed of himself, sat down, and