'As hot as it pleases,' he said again, when they were drinking tea in the cabin. 'It really cannot be much hotter, or nothing but crocodiles would survive. Have you ever known a heat like this, Stephen?'

'I have not,' said Stephen.

'Nelson once said he did not need a greatcoat - love for his country kept him warm. I wonder whether it would have kept him cool, had he been here? I'm sure it has no effect on me: I drip like Purvis's distilling machine.'

'Perhaps you do not love your country quite enough.'

'Who could, with the income-tax at two shillings in the pound, and captains docked an eighth of their prize-money?'

The first wafts of the Egyptian wind came a little after dawn. The Niobe was lying at single anchor well outside the harbour, having warped clear of all shipping in the night: the breeze had dropped to a dead calm during the middle watch, and even with all scuttles and hatches open it was stiflingly hot below; yet these first Egyptian wafts were hotter still.

Jack had taken a couple of cat-naps, but he was on deck at first light and he saw the wind move across the troubled, tide-rippled water with a great lifting of his heart, a feeling of liberation, of hope renewed. With so many and such willing hands the capstan fairly spun round, plucking the anchor up with scarcely a pause; and soon after the Niobe had got under way, casting as prettily as could be wished in spite of the cross tide, he found that although she could not compare with the Surprise in breeding and instant response nor in speed, she was a stiff, serviceable little ship, not much inclined to sag to leeward, at least when sailing large; and this was a great satisfaction to him. Yet there was something strange about the breeze: not only its extraordinary heat, like the breath out of an oven, nor its uneasy, unsettled gusting but something else that he could not define. The young sun blazed clear in the pure eastern sky, terribly strong already, but over there in the west there was a lowering murk, and all along the horizon, rising some ten degrees, an orange-tawny bar, too thick for cloud.

'I do not know what to make of it,' he said to himself. As he turned to go below for his first breakfast, the first wonderfully reviving cup of coffee - the genuine Mocha, straight from that interesting port - that he had already smelt, he caught the eyes of his four young gentlemen fixed thoughtfully upon him. 'Of course,' he reflected, 'they expect me to know what to make of it. A captain is omniscient.'

Stephen walked in, holding a small bottle. 'Good day to you, now,' he said. 'Do you know the temperature of the sea? It is eighty-four degrees by Fahrenheit's thermometer. The salinity I have not yet calculated, but suppose it to be extraordinarily high.'

'I am sure it is. This is an extraordinary place altogether. The glass has not dropped very much, yet... I tell you what, Stephen, I should take it kindly if you would ask Hassan what he thinks of the bar in the western sky. Since he spends much of his time roaming about the Arabian desert on a camel he must take notice of the local weather. But there is no hurry; let us finish our pot first.'

It was as well that there was no hurry, because the pot was huge and Stephen unusually prosy, on the subject of scorpions. A large number had been found below and the Surprises were hurrying about killing them. '. . . most illiberal- your scorpion never wantonly attacked- stung only if provoked- might cause a certain amount of discomfort, even coma, but was rarely lethal- it might almost be said never, except in the case of those whose hearts were out of order, and they were probably condemned in any case."

'What about poor Hairabedian?' asked Jack.

'He will be running about tomorrow, rather better for his rest,' said Stephen, and at this moment a squall struck the Niobe, laying her over almost on her beam ends. The coffee shot to leeward, though they ludicrously preserved their empty cups; and as the ship righted Jack recovered his feet, making his way through the tumble of chairs, table, papers and instruments. The moment he passed the cabin door he was enveloped in a tawny cloud of sand -sand flying, sand underfoot, sand grating between his teeth- through which he dimly saw a fine scene of confusion. Sailcloth was threshing wildly, the wheel, spinning round, had broken the helmsman's arm and flung him against the rail, the booms and the boats were all abroad, and a ghostly maintopmast staysail, blown almost out of its bolt-rope, streamed away to leeward. The situation was critical, though the present damage was not very grave; the breechings of the guns had held- had even one of the nine-pounders plunged through the other side in that monstrous lee-lurch the ship might have foundered directly - the sheets had instantly been started, preserving the masts, and two quartermasters were already at the wheel. What was much more serious was the crowd of horrified Turks: some were running about the forecastle and the waist in the swirling dust and sand, still more were swarming up the main and fore hatchways. Many of those on deck clung to the running rigging, blocking the seamen's efforts; and if more joined them it would be impossible to work the ship: another squall must lay her down, perhaps for good, certainly with great loss of life- the landsmen would be washed overboard by the score.

Mowett, Rowan and the master were there - Gill half naked. 'Drive them below," cried Jack, running forward with his arms spread and going 'Hoosh, hoosh,' as though he were herding geese. The Turks were furious fighters by land, but now they were at a loss, out of their element; many were sea-sick and all were terrified, disarmed. The total competence and authority of the four officers advancing so easily over the heaving deck daunted them. They stumbled and blundered to the hatchways and climbed or fell in heaps below. Hardly had Jack given the order 'Lay the hatches' which would keep them there, than he felt the vacuum in his ears that came a split second before the second squall. The blast laid the ship over, nor did she fully recover, for now the Egyptian had set in, blowing irregularly but hard and without a pause. As Jack made his way aft, his eyes almost closed against the sand, he had time to wonder whether people could breathe in such hot, thick air, and to thank his stars that he had not sent up topgallantmasts.

He could also have thanked them for a strong crew of able seamen and an entirely professional set of officers- Mowett and Rowan might be given to verse in the gunroom, but they were all hard tough driving prose on deck in an emergency. Yet even if he had had time he would probably not have done so, since he took seamanship for granted in those who belonged to the Navy, abhorring its absence as extremely discreditable if not downright wicked and praising only its highest flights: however, the question did not arise, because for almost all the twenty hours that followed he was wholly absorbed in preserving his ship and directing her course.

The first long, long stretch was taken up with reducing sail, dealing with such problems as securing the spars and the remaining boats, sending up preventer stays and braces and rolling tackles, providing the guns with double-frapped preventer-breechings, making good the damage aloft, and perpetually looking out for squalls, as far as that was possible in a twilight of sand flying through a haze of very finely-divided yellow dust, a haze so thick that the sun at noon showed like a red orange hanging there as it might have hung over London in November, a November with a temperature of a hundred and twenty-five in the shade.

Then at some point in the forenoon, when the sprung foretopmast had been fished and the Egyptian had settled into a steadier, less gusty stride, the balance changed: it was now less a question of survival than one of wringing every possible mile from the wind, of 'spoiling the Egyptian" as Jack said to himself, a wild glee having succeeded the intense gravity of those first hours, when a false move might have meant loss with all hands. There were few things that moved him more than driving a ship to the limit of her possibilities in a very strong blow, and now his great concern was finding just how much sail the Niobe could carry and where it should be set: the answer obviously varied with the force of the wind and the scend of the sea, and that variation itself was by no means simple, because of the strong and continually changing tidal streams in the gulf and its strange shifting currents.