ong down the Red Sea at her steady nine
knots, and Mr. Hugh Wenlock put a couple of bunk pillows on a canvas
boat-cover under the bridge deck awnings, and lay there and amused
himself with cigarettes and a magazine. Captain Owen Kettle sat before a
table in the chart-house with his head on one side, and a pen in his
fingers, and went through accounts. But though Wenlock, when he had
finished his magazine, quickly went off to sleep, Captain Kettle's
struggles with arithmetic were violent enough to keep him very
thoroughly awake, and when a due proportion of the figures had been
checked, he put the papers in a drawer, and was quite ready to tackle
the next subject.

He had not seen necessary to mention the fact to Mr. Wenlock, but while
that young man was talking of the Miss Teresa Anderson, who at present
was "quite a big personage in her way" at Dunkhot, a memory had come to
him that he had heard of the lady before in somewhat less prosaic terms.
All sailormen who have done business on the great sea highway between
West and East during recent years have had the yarn given to them at one
time or another, and most of them have regarded it as gratuitous legend.
Kettle was one of these. But he was beginning to think there was
something more in it than a mere sailor's yarn, and he was anxious to
see if there was any new variation in the telling.

So he sent for Murray, his mate, a smart young sailor of the newer
school, who preferred to be called "chief officer," made him sit, and
commenced talk of a purely professional nature. Finally he said: "And
since I saw you last, the schedule's changed. We call in at Dunkhot, for
that passenger Mr. Wenlock to do some private business ashore, before we
go on to our Persian Gulf ports."

Murray repeated the name thoughtfully. "Dunkhot? Let's see, that's on
the South Arabian coast, about a day's steam from Aden, and a beast of a
place to get at, so I've heard. Oh, and of course, that's the place
where the She-Sultan, or Queen, or whatever she calls herself, is boss."

"So there is really a woman of that kind there, is there? I'd heard of
her, like everybody else has, but I thought she was only a yarn."

"No, she's there in the flesh, sir, right enough; lots of flesh,
according to what I've gathered. A serang of one of the B. and I. boats,
who'd been in Dunkhot, told me about her only last year. She makes war,
leads her troops, cuts off heads, and does the Eastern potentate up to
th