g down under easy sail the
engine-fires were ready banked up, so that it didn't take us long to get
up steam; and we were soon round like a shot, and retracing our way,
right in the face of the wind, after a large dhow which we could see
stealing up along-shore and hugging the land. She was what the Arabs
called a batilla, and had two large lugs, or lateen sails set, besides a
sort of square-cut jib forwards on her high-peaked bowsprit, by the aid
of which she was sailing close-hauled, almost in the very teeth of the
nor'-easter that was blowing pretty stiffly at the time, making it risky
work for a vessel to approach so near a lee-shore as she was doing.
However, I suppose her captain thought he would be able to slip by us in
the darkness, when he might have got under the shelter of the island we
had passed only a short while previously in our downward passage to the
Mozambique; and, once he was out of sight of the _Dolphin_, of course he
could have put out to sea again at his leisure, making his way north as
soon as the coast seemed clear, and thus escaping us altogether."

"But he reckoned without his host that time, eh?" said I.

"Aye, that he did," responded the ex-man-o'-war's-man, warming up to his
subject as he proceeded. "He made a great mistake, did that there Arab
slave skipper when he thought he'd hoodwink us aboard the _Dolphin_ this
evening I'm a-talking of--a mistake, sir, as I'll soon show you, that
cost him not only his vessel, but his life as well!"

"Indeed?" I interposed, beginning to get interested in Ben's yarn now
that he had actually got under weigh with it in earnest.

"Yes, that it did," replied Ben Campion, striking another match to
relight his pipe, which had gone out in the interval, and puffing away
vigorously for a few seconds in order to get it in full blast.--"He was
a 'cute chap, though, that skipper," continued Ben presently when he had
got the pipe to go to his satisfaction;--"for no sooner had he perceived
that we had observed him and were in chase, than he threw off all
pretence of attempting to deceive us by passing off as a simple trader.
Abandoning his design of beating up to Cape Delgado, he wore the dhow
round as sharp as lightning and made off down along the coast, right
before the full strength of the monsoon; where, with the wind in his
favour, he would have a better chance of getting away from us, those
dhows, as I've told you, sometimes walking away from a steam-pinna