Of what use could it have been?
The Master was looking far to eastward, now with the naked eye, now sweeping the prospect with binoculars.

He was studying the African coast, clearly in sight as a long, whitish line of sand with a whiter collar of foamy surf, fifteen miles away.
A few gulls had begun to show--strange, small gulls, yellow-beaked and swift.

Off to northward, a native dhow was beating down-wind with full-bellied lateen sail, with matting over its hatches.

Heat was beginning to grow intense, for no longer was _Nissr_ making a gale that cooled; no longer was she at high, cold levels.

Africa, the tropics, had suddenly become real; and the sudden contrast oppressed them all.
Through the shimmering, quivering air, an arid pallor extended up the eastern sky; a pale, milky illumination, dull-white over the desert, that told of the furnace into which _Nissr_ was drifting--if indeed she could survive till she reached land.