r ship; and all of us, as I have said, were
longing for something to wake us up.

This `something' came at last.

Ay; and in a most unexpected fashion, too!

It was getting near the time for the _Mermaid_ to come and relieve us,
and we were making for our rendezvous at Bagamoyo, to the south of
Zanzibar, for her to pick us up.

The south-west monsoon having slackened down a good deal within the last
few days, though the month of August, when it usually blows with its
greatest force, we were able to work well to windward; and we were
rapidly closing on Bagamoyo, when the sea began to get up in a very
strange manner, and the sky, which had been cloudless, as customary,
since the morning, became clouded with masses of fleeting vapour that
presently banked themselves on the horizon to the north.

"I say, Draper," said Mr Chisholm, who, since his promotion, had been
appointed to the cutter, turning round to our coxswain, "what do you
think of the weather?"

"Think, sir?" rejoined Draper, who had served on the East African
station before joining the _Mermaid_, and `knew the ropes,' as the
saying goes. "I don't think about it at all, sir."

"Well, well," said Mr Chisholm, who was a jocular sort of young fellow
and never hard on a man, besides which he knew Draper's crusty way,
"tell us what you know, then."

"Very good, sir," replied our old shellback of a coxswain. "Then, I
knows, sir, the monsoon's on the shift, and we're agoin' to have a blow
from the nor'ard afore dark."

"What do you advise our doing, coxen?"

"Adwise, sir?" repeated Draper, as usual, after Mr Chisholm, his habit
always when asked a question. "If I was you, sir, I'd up stick and run
for it, sir, to the nearest port."

"The nearest port on our lee is Zanzibar," said Mr Chisholm. "I
suppose you mean to loo'ard, Draper?"

"Aye, aye, sir, I means to loo'ard."

"Then you advise our putting up the helm and running for Zanzibar?"

"Aye."

The cutter was rigged with a dipping lug and a spritsail; so, no sooner
had crusty old Draper given his laconic answer to Mr Chisholm, than the
latter sang out to Larrikins, who was in the bows.

"Look out there forrud!" he cried. "Stand by to dip!"

This is considered one of the smartest things in boat-sailing, the men
having to be specially stationed for the purpose; but, as we had been
living in the cutter now for three months, and had experience of her
under any and every change of wind and sail,