At daybreak they hove anchor and steamed South along the coast, until one morning a dark line on the port bow indicated land. Then they turned a quarter circle, the line got faint, as if it ran back to the East, and after they took soundings _Mossamedes_ steamed into a wide, shallow bay. Some time after she brought up a plume of smoke blew across the sandhills, a boat was swung out and Kit and the interpreter went ashore. Nothing romantic marked the landing of the cartridges. A few big, dark-skinned men came down the beach, took the boxes from the sailors and vanished in the sand. The boat pulled off and Kit began to think smuggling in Africa was strangely flat.
Then _Mossamedes_, stopping now and then to use the lead, steamed North dead-slow. They saw no ships, although at times a trail of smoke stained the blue horizon. Liners bound for Cape Town kept deep water, and the captains of the Guinea boats hauled off until they made Cape Verde. The stream of traffic flowed along, but did not touch the forbidding coast.
At length Don Erminio headed cautiously for the beach and _Mossamedes_ dropped anchor in the pool among the sands. For two or three days the captain and Kit went fishing and then, when the smoke signal wavered about the mouth of the wady, Kit went ashore with Miguel in the big cargo launch. In a sense, perhaps, the job was not his, but he felt his responsibility. The camels were his employer's, and he must see them got on board.
The morning was hot, the sea luminous green, streaked by dazzling lines of foam. Sandhills and stony hummocks floated like a mirage in quivering, reflected light. Farther off, dust storms tossed in spirals and dissolved. Now and then the wind got light for a few minutes and Kit felt he could not breathe, but there was no break in the steady beat of the white surge on the beach.
When the rollers began to curl Miguel threw out an anchor, and the boat drove in stern-foremost until the rope brought her up. This was possible because the headland broke the sea, but Kit thought the launch would soon be swamped if the wind backed farther North. The interpreter jumped overboard, and by and by men in fluttering blue and white clothes drove the camels from the wady. When the animals reached the beach all the crew but Miguel went overboard, and the hardest work Kit had known began. The camels knelt while the head-ropes were fixed, but some stretched their long necks and tried to seize his arm with their yellow teeth. They grunted and made savage noises, and when they were driven to the water obstinately stopped.