Fred E. Wynne

“ I shrank from returning to the shop in Brighton, though it was a duty I had undertaken. The shop was part of the iniquity, and the prospect of re-opening all that business struck a chill through me, like getting into a wet shirt.
To discuss the matter with Schultz was particularly revolting, for he alone, of them all, struck me as being completely abject and unclean. Jakoub was at least a courageous scoundrel and had a dignity of his own; even Van Ermengen was probably in some respects a man. But there was that about Schultz which made me think of him as an insult to humanity. ”

“ It brought to my mind childhood’s dream-pictures of the glory of the river that flows round the Throne of God, and my heart ached with the splendour of it.
The sun came as a tyrant. It seemed to take but a few moments before he was clear of the vapour of the horizon, and the heat of the day had begun.
I went below to my cabin. I dressed myself, and sorrowfully bestowed what I needed for my journey in a hold-all.
The hot day seemed intolerably long. I lay on deck trying in vain to read. Their manifest anxiety kept Edmund and Welfare in an irritable silence. ”

“ It is a sound that would wake no sleeper. But I can imagine no sound more terrifying to one listening in the dark.
In a spasm of terror I pressed the switch and sat up, covering Jakoub with the revolver. He stood by the wall near the end of my bed. One hand was in the bosom of his galabieh. He was not smiling, but his lips were drawn back and his teeth bared in a kind of snarl, the reaction of a man startled and disconcerted by sudden fright. Fear was like a third party between us.
“Put your weapon on the table or I’ll fire.” ”

“ I had seen the splendour of the Mediterranean sky, the pageantry of dawn and sunset, of moonrise and the evening star, as they might have appeared to the first man; but now all was tarnished again by human associations. I had to put on life again as one might don a hair-shirt. And I shrank from it.
Edmund began to hold aloof again, and some instinct warned me that Welfare was seeking in his clumsy mind for the easiest way of making some difficult proposition. ”

“ I was thinking aloud, forgetful of Edmund.
“My dear old man!” he cried, getting up and taking my hands, “you are straining your conscience until you’ll dislocate the poor old thing, just for my sake. Don’t do it. I cannot stand it! Welfare and I can evaporate again. The world is round and one can go round it. Hand over Jakoub and let him get what he deserves. ”

“ It’s a dangerous thing to retire, Captain Welfare. I’ve seen a lot of men in the Services retired under the sixty-three years rule. They’ve been active, useful, young-seeming men, keenly looking forward to enjoying their pensions. But, when it’s come, they’ve grown old and boring all at once, simply tumbled headlong into old age, and very often they’ve died in a year or two. You won’t want to retire, will you, Davoren?”
“Oh, I should simply knock about in some other part of the sea,” said Edmund. ”

“ The sound of the sea is always soothing and always melancholy, but it is especially so in distant places, for the sea has but one voice, everywhere its murmur is the same that we hear at home.
Edmund came in about midnight, and we sat together in the dark by the window.
Next door to the hotel there was a café, and its chairs and tables were spread out over the wide footpath. We could see under its electric lights the tops and tassels of tarbooshes, and the white discs of straw hats whose owners sat sipping coffee or lager beer, and eating olives and strange sweets. ”

“ For days and days it seemed we hugged the African coast, sometimes so close that we could see the stones and sand on the shingly beach below barren rocky foothills. For the most part the land seemed utterly uninhabited, but occasionally we passed a greener tract, where there were sparse crops and stunted bushes, occasionally a flat-roofed hovel among them, and through Captain Welfare’s telescope I could make out goats and children moving. ”

“ The sun had not yet risen, but the dawn was foretold by a lilac glow in the east where Venus still shone illustrious as a morning star.
The Astarte was at anchor in a little cove, evidently the one I had been shown on the chart, for on my left I could see in the twilight the tall [140] sandhills mentioned by Welfare. They were strangely carved by the wind to sharp, delicately curved edges with a surpassing beauty of line. Beside them on a lower level rose the little rounded dome of the sheikh’s tomb, over which leaned a single tall, crooked date palm. ”

“ I desire especially that Edmund’s children may some day have an opportunity of appraising the truth about their father’s youth, if it should happen that any aspersions should ever be cast upon his character. For I do believe in children knowing the truth about their parents. Filial love, without any opportunity for comparison and just criticism, seems to me but a hollow tradition, liable to collapse at the first whiff of truth. ”

“ Here I found a most unexpected scene of comfort and civilisation. Most of my limited experience of yachting had been gained in small boats, and I had foolishly modelled my anticipation of the Astarte on my recollections of these. So I was surprised at the width and spaciousness I found.
A powerful lamp deeply shaded in red and suspended from the skylight lit up the table, which was laid for some sort of late evening meal. There were deep-red tulips in vases, and a pleasant gleam of silver and cut glass on the white cloth. ”

“ Edmund replied, but I thought there was a note of anxiety in his voice.
“Infernal cheek of him walking in here, whatever it is,” grumbled Welfare.
“Yes, of course,” Edmund agreed. “He should have given his message to Hassan.”
I was enjoying the situation, taking the cowardly pleasure that one does when a man one dislikes incurs the blame of people one suspects of supporting him. I had felt I was in a minority in my resentment of Jakoub, and now I tasted the craven joy of having others on my side.
“Excuse me,” said Edmund as he finished his coffee, and he went on deck. ”

“ But Captain Welfare was not to be stopped now, any more than a body of stampeded mules. He ignored Edmund, who stretched out his legs, shut his eyes, and pretended to go to sleep.
“I want to put it on record, sir, as I appreciate—as we appreciate the handsome way you have met us on these occasions. You’ve acted as a gentleman, sir, because you are a gentleman, and as a man because—well—because you are a man.” ”

“ It was an intense desire to pull that trigger and kill him. It was blood-lust. It had never visited me before, and I felt it now as an intolerable temptation.
Jakoub saw it in my face. I saw it reflected by the terror in his eyes.
“Do not, effendi,” he moaned, and I pitied him. The desire for his life faded out.
“In an hour it will be day,” he argued. “The people will awake. If I am found here there will be plenty questions. It is not wise, effendi!”
[193] I reached out with my left hand and took his knife from the table. ”

“ As I spoke Edmund came out of the morning-room with Jakoub.
“The idiot swears it’s a trap. He says he won’t go unless the ‘sheikh,’ as he calls him, promises we are doing the straight thing.”
“It is Ringrose,” growled Jakoub; “I know him; this is his plan to trap me.”
“I swear, Jakoub——” I began, but then the bishop, who had overheard the conversation, joined us.
“I promise you,” he said, “in the name of the one God whom we both worship, that we are doing what we believe to be the best thing for you as well as for others. I promise that in this we are dealing faithfully with you. ”

“ The hot wind blew every moment stronger and more steadily, and now it blew up a cloud of dust and sand from the shuffling feet of the camels.
Jakoub rode on ahead with a mounted Arab, whom I took to be the owner, or at least the hirer of the camels.
We were travelling about east-sou’-east, our route making an acute angle with the coast. After about an hour’s going, the desert rose to a stony ridge where there was an outcrop of some pale fossiliferous rock which lay in flat slabs like an artificial pavement. ”

“ They are apt to look upon events that have happened at home as trivial, merely because they happened at home and not in some other latitude. Until they settle down again, they think of the people around them as absurdly interested in very minor matters. They forget that in them too distance had once annihilated interest, and will do so again.
As always happens on such occasions, Bates and Mrs. Rattray were much more eager to impart information than to receive it, and for once the returned adventurer was sincerely thankful for this perfectly natural attitude of mind. ”

“ After a hasty meal we walked down by the road to the beach. Snape came with us, smiling vacuously as though he thought we were doing something comic, but couldn’t see the joke.
“The niggers can bring your kit down when they have stowed away the goods,” Edmund said.
It would be long before the moon, nearing its last quarter, rose. The only light was from a pale border of sky in the west under the straight edge of the great cloud mass that had overspread the firmament. ”

“ When I came back on deck, rather self-conscious in my white suit and helmet, I saw the camels crouching on the beach, and heard with dread their deep guttural grumblings and threatenings as their loads were roped on to them.
But what surprised me most of all was the sudden appearance among us of a stranger. This was a young clean-shaved Egyptian of the middle class, dressed in a suit of drab linen with a tarboosh on his head.
Edmund laughed as he came up to us with an obsequious salaam.
[143] “Let me introduce you to your dragoman,” he said. ”

“ I tell you, sir, if a convict’s friends have any money when he’s sent there, they try to bribe a sentry to shoot him. It’s all they can do. Men have prayed their judges to hang them, sooner than be sent there.”
This appeal of Captain Welfare’s impressed me, but I only said, “All the same, I don’t see why I should help him to escape the law. It’s a very unpleasant, a very risky, a very wrong thing for a man in my position to do.”
“But,” said Edmund, “you don’t know anything against him really except what we’ve told you—our suspicions.”
“You forget that you mentioned warrants for his arrest.” ”

“ But now there was neither mystery nor beauty: it was just sand, sand and loose stones, stretching everywhere in billows to the ring of the horizon. The ridges of sand hid nothing but other ridges, and hollows full of sand. I found I hated it.
Away to the south, in the wind’s eye, the horizon was darkened by a strange haze, yellowish brown, [147] rising slowly higher in the sky, a queer, unnatural, threatening cloud.
There were three Arab boys who trudged along beside the baggage camels, occasionally addressing what sounded like insults to them. ”

“ I heard no more and settled back as comfortably as possible into my groove. But for the first time I felt Edmund had not behaved well, a film formed on the surface of my warm love for him, and I knew there was anger towards myself in his heart. ”

“ Two of the Arab boys who had walked by the baggage camels came in with rugs and mats, and the hamper packed by Hassan.
Jakoub gave them directions in their own language, and all these people busied themselves about providing for my comfort.
I asked myself why I hated Jakoub, and how I knew that he despised me. I did not know these Arab boys at all. If among them they had decided to put me to death, they would have an easy task. They might have done it before I could even have pointed my revolver at them. ”

“ Bates had the imagination and sympathy which make the best kind of servant, and he conceived of me as something utterly helpless in his absence.
I shook off Snape as soon as I could after lunch, and went up on the Downs where I could get a wide view of the Channel.
There was a fresh topsail breeze from the east, a fair wind for the Astarte. I knew it had held steady for forty-eight hours. It was not unreasonable to expect that she would come up to time or ahead of it. ”