-half per cent, commission on all profits, Kettle had developed into a
regular glutton for cargo; and the knowledge of men and places which he
had so laboriously acquired in former days served him finely. Three
times he got doles of cargo at good stiff freights at points where few
other men would have dreamed of looking. He was an ideal man for the
master of an ocean tramp. He was exactly honest; he had a world of
misfortunes behind to spur him on; he was quick of decision; and he had
developed a nose for cargo, and a knack of extorting it from merchants,
that were little short of miraculous. And, in fact, if things went on as
they had started, he stood a very good chance of making 50 per cent, on
the _Parakeet's_ capital for the voyage, and so earning promotion to one
of the firm's better ships.

But though in the many days of his adversity Captain Kettle had never
shunned any risks which came in his way, with this new prosperity fresh
and pleasant at his feet, he was beginning to tell himself that risks
were foolish things. He arrived off Dunkhot and rang off his engines,
and frowned angrily at the shore.

The town stood on an eminence, snugly walled, and filled with cool,
square houses. At one side, the high minaret of a mosque stood up like a
bayonet, and at the other, standing in a ring of garden, was a larger
building, which seemed to call itself palace. There was a small fringe
of cultivation beside the walls of the town, and beyond was arid desert,
which danced and shimmered under the violent sun.

But all this lay small and far off, like a tiny picture in some huge
frame, and showing only through the glass. A maze of reefs guarded the
shore, and tore up the sleek Indian Ocean swells into spouting breakers;
and though there was anchorage inside, tenanted indeed by a score of
sailing craft, the way to it was openly perilous. And so for the present
the _Parakeet_ lay to, rolling outside the entrance, flying a pilot
jack, and waiting developments.

Captain Kettle might have his disquieting thoughts, still outwardly he
was cool. But Mr. Hugh Wenlock was on deck in the sprucest of his
apparel, and was visibly anxious and fidgety, as befitted a man who
shortly expected to enter into the bonds of matrimony.

A double-ended boat came off presently, manned by naked Arabs, and
steered by a man in a white burnous. She swept up alongside, caught a
rope and made fast, and the man in white introduced himself as a pilot.