my chance. Look! What is that cloud?" and he pointed to a dark blotch
upon the starry sky, some miles astern of us.

"Go and ask the man at the tiller," I said.

He rose, stretched his arms, and went. Presently he returned.

"He says it is a squall, but it will pass far on one side of us."

Just then Job came up, looking very stout and English in his
shooting-suit of brown flannel, and with a sort of perplexed appearance
upon his honest round face that had been very common with him since he
got into these strange waters.

"Please, sir," he said, touching his sun hat, which was stuck on to the
back of his head in a somewhat ludicrous fashion, "as we have got all
those guns and things in the whale-boat astern, to say nothing of the
provisions in the lockers, I think it would be best if I got down and
slept in her. I don't like the looks" (here he dropped his voice to a
portentous whisper) "of these black gentry; they have such a wonderful
thievish way about them. Supposing now that some of them were to slip
into the boat at night and cut the cable, and make off with her? That
would be a pretty go, that would."

The whale-boat, I may explain, was one specially built for us at Dundee,
in Scotland. We had brought it with us, as we knew that this coast was a
network of creeks, and that we might require something to navigate
them with. She was a beautiful boat, thirty-feet in length, with a
centre-board for sailing, copper-bottomed to keep the worm out of her,
and full of water-tight compartments. The Captain of the dhow had told