“You’ll be part of his disguise. He’ll go as your dragoman. It’s the only way to get him safely into Alexandria, and we must have him there for a few days to negotiate this sale.”
“Why can’t you go yourself, or Captain Welfare?”
“I’m wanted to navigate the ship. Welfare couldn’t manage the business, because he can’t talk the lingo. And Jakoub must be got off the ship before they come and look for him.”
“And why should I help the brute to escape? I don’t want him to escape!”
“Mr. Davoren,” said Welfare very solemnly, “Jakoub is a wrong ’un, I admit. A dead wrong ’un. I’ve never disguised my opinion about that. I don’t know what the charges against him may be—not all of them. But I know this, however bad you may think him, if you saw the convict prison at Tourah you wouldn’t want to help get him there. If you saw the poor devils there working in chains in the quarries under the desert sun, you’d know that no man is bad enough for it. 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.”
“Aye. We did mention that,” said Welfare; “it’s a pity, but we had to.”
“Captain Welfare, am I to understand that you decide beforehand how much of the truth I am to be told?”