of the other hands, were polishing up the brasswork of the machine-guns
on the upper deck, "d'yer know where we're bound in such a hurry?"

"No, Larry," I replied. "Somewhere up the coast, though, I 'spect from
what I told you down below."

Larrikins chuckled to himself.

"Ye'r a fine chap, Tom, to give a fellow h'infumation," he said with a
snigger. "I could 'a told you as much meself. Why, carn't I see with
'arf a h'eye we're steerin' to the north'ard up the coast, with the
munsoon a-blowin' right in our teeth and the sun on our starb'rd 'and!"

I laughed, too, at the sharp wag's rejoinder.

"Well, Larry," I said at last, after polishing up the ratchet of the
Nordenfeldt I was working at to my personal satisfaction, hoping to have
the aiming of it bye-and-bye, "I can't tell you any more than that we
are bound up the coast, and are likely to have a brush with the Arabs
along there somewhere; but where that somewhere is, my joker, I'm hanged
if I know!"

"I can tell you, mate," put in a man who was rubbing up the gun at the
end of the bridge hard by where we were standing. "We're off for
Mombassa again. I heard `old Square toes,' the navigator, tell Mr
Chisholm just now. He said we were agoin' to meet the _Merlin_ there,
and purseed further up the coast together."

"Oh!" said Larry, "that means business, Tom."

"Ay," said I, "it does, my hearty, and to tell the truth, Larry, I'm
jolly glad of it."

So were all hands on board, when the news spread through the ship; and,
on our reaching Mombassa late in the afternoon of the same day, steaming
fifteen knots all the way, pretty nearly our full speed when the
stokehold was not `closed up,' we found the _Merlin_ there before us, as
the man on deck had told Larry and me in the morning.

This made assurance a certainty, every man-jack of the crew being cock-
a-hoop with excitement, when, after a lot of signalling between the two
cruisers, and the _Merlin's_ gig bringing her captain alongside, he
being junior to `old Hankey Pankey,' the two of us sailed off in company
just before sunset.

Our destination was Malindi, at the mouth of the Sabaki river, where it
was reported the Somalis had made an inroad into the British
protectorate, and burnt one of the out stations of the East African
Company, slaughtering all the whites and natives employed by the
traders.

This place was only some sixty miles to the northward of Mombassa; and
all the arrangements for ou