The Breeze From Seaward Set Us Slowly But Steadily Towards
The Reef, A Fact Of Which We Soon Became Conscious.
Our anchor was not
dragging; it had not rope enough to touch the bottom, and vainly we
sought for more.
In fact the "Golden Wire" was as disgracefully
deficient in all the appliances of safety, as any English merchantman
in the nineteenth century,-a circumstance which accounts for the
shipwrecks and for the terrible loss of life perpetually occurring
about the Pilgrimage-season in these seas. Had she struck upon the
razor-like edges of the coral-reef, she would have melted
[p.220] away like a sugar-plum in the ripple, for the tide was rising
at the time. Having nothing better to do, we began to make as much
noise as possible. Fortunately for us, the Rais commanding the
Persian's boat was an Arab from Jeddah; and more than once we had
treated him with great civility. Guessing the cause of our distress, he
sent two sailors overboard with a cable; they swam gallantly up to us;
and in a few minutes we were safely moored to the stern of our useful
neighbour. Which done, we applied ourselves to the grateful task of
beating our Rais, and richly had he deserved it. Before noon, when the
wind was shifting, he had not once given himself the trouble to wear;
and when the breeze was falling, he preferred dosing to taking
advantage of what little wind remained. With energy we might have been
moored that night comfortably under the side of Hassani Island, instead
of floating about on an unquiet sea with a lee-shore of coral-reef
within a few yards of our counter.
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