on me, and it's money in my pocket."

"If I do business of that kind this cruise, Rimmle, I promise you I'll
do it with Hassan."

"Thank you, Captain. Speedy voyage to you, and don't forget Hassan.
Good-by, sir, to you."

Within the hour we sailed for Momba.


III

A squadron of corvettes and sloops o' war put their glasses on us lazily
as we neared Momba; but with our Dutch bow and stern, our stumpy spars,
no self-respecting war-ship was bothering the _Triton_. They let us pass
without so much as a hail.

Captain Blaise planned to cross Momba Bar that night, all the more
surely to cross because the watchers ashore, seeing us hang on and off
in the late afternoon, would probably report that we were waiting for
morning. So we hauled her to in the dusk where, were it light, we would
have seen, under its three fathom of water, Momba Bar lying white and
smooth and quiet as a sanded deck as we passed on. With the wind coming
low and light from the land that was; but were it a high wind and from
the sea, there would be no going over that bar at night or any other
time.

We slipped silently up the inside, the northerly passage, to the lagoon,
and crept up the lagoon just as silently, but even as we were mooring