Secret of the Sands Read Online Free Page A

dates, ship’s tack, sheep’s milk, coffee, a small amount of cornbread and any decent-sized fish the younger members of the crew can scoop out of the water.
    ‘Well, lads, you did not join up, I trust, in the hope of feasting at the expense of the Bombay Marine?’
    Haines pours his officers a glass each.
    ‘A toast, shall we?’ he says with largesse.
    That very morning the last of the dead was buried at sea – an Irish seadog from Belfast called Johnny Mullins, who fought the malaria like a trouper but lost in the end. All members of the crew who caught the sickness are either dead or cured now. The worst has passed and Haines holds up his glass.
    ‘We survivors, gentlemen. May our poor fellows rest in peace.’
    The boys shift uneasily. Protocol demands that they do not start the proceedings of dinner without all the invited officers present. They may be young, but they know the form.
    ‘Come now,’ says the captain testily, imposing his authority.
    Slowly, the boys concur. Uneasily, they pick up their glasses and down the wine.
    ‘Jardine!’ the captain calls for service.
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘Mutton stew is it?’
    ‘Yes, sir. With seaweeds. But . . .’
    ‘If Lieutenant Wellsted cannot be troubled to join us on time, then I see no reason why we should wait on his pleasure.’
    Haines turns back to the little group.
    ‘Now,’ he says. ‘The soundings you took today, young Ormsby. I checked over your work and I was most impressed. Heaving the lead all afternoon like that and collating your measurements with excellent accuracy – why, you are a regular Maudsley man, are you not? We’ll have you in charge of this survey yet!’
    Ormsby’s grin could illuminate London Bridge. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he says as Jardine shuffles in with a pewter casserole dish, steam emanating from the open lid, and starts to serve the officers their dinner.

Chapter Six
    Jessop and Jones are coming to realise that the Dhofaris have a very different sense of time. Or, as the lieutenant puts it, ‘You cannot trust a word the buggers say.’ It has been another day or two to the emir’s camp for almost a week now, and no manner of earnest enquiry elicits any other response from the men, than occasionally, a wry shrug of the shoulders. Jessop restricts Jones from becoming too insistent.
    ‘We are not in such a rush, old man,’ he points out.
    It is long enough till the men’s rendezvous with the Palinurus that they have time to lag behind their schedule.
    Apart from their inability to keep to a timetable, Jessop finds the Dhofaris very pleasant. They are endlessly patient with his attempts to map the route, which is proving extremely difficult. For a start, for most of the day, the brass instruments the doctor brought for the job are far too hot to touch.
    ‘Sort of thing you don’t realise in Southampton,’ he smiles.
    Jones does not find this kind of thing amusing. The tasks are as much his as the doctor’s to complete but the lieutenant constantly gives up, the doctor considers, a mite too easily for an English officer who is charged with what is, after all, the fairly routine, if inconvenient, mission of checking the lie of the land. The Dhofaris bind their hands in cloth and try their best to assist.
    At night, by the panorama of low-slung stars with which the region is blessed, the instruments provide better results. The sand dunes, however, are tricky to render. The wind will move them long before the next British mission comes inland, making that element of the map all but useless. There is no landscape on earth as changeable as the desert, Jessop muses. While the Northumberland hills where he grew up have remained largely the same for thousands of years, the features of the desert landscape might last no more than a few weeks. The doctor does not give up, though. He merely notates all his thoughts and as much detail as he can manage, down to the fact that the thin goats the Dhofaris have brought have shorter