There is however, fortunately, a remarkable flexibility about men’s clothes, and I was able to pick out a couple of suits which I could wear with comfort and without loss of self-respect. Indeed I can say more than that. So persistent is human vanity that I found myself admiring my own appearance in the clean white drill. It gave me, I thought, a look of youth and distinction to which I imagined I had long since renounced all claims.
Edmund caught me in front of the mirror deciding on the most becoming tilt of the pith helmet. This persistence of the peacock in one’s nature is very disturbing.
I was woken very early in the morning by a rattle which shook the whole ship. I started up and realised that it was the anchor chain running out. My long journey in the Astarte was at an end.
I went straight on deck, and saw the desert close to me for the first time.
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 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. Away to the right of this the sand stretched to the horizon in wave after wave, yellow and silver in the faint light, with violet shadows between the vast undulations, and a few black patches of camel-scrub here and there.
The wind had almost gone. It ruffled the sea outside to a dark grey, but around us in the little bay the water lay silent, polished and opalescent under the growing dawn.
The dinghy was already being rowed ashore, and I recognised Jakoub’s back, sitting crouched like a bird of prey in the stern-sheets.
The crew were busy getting the sails off the ship and stowing them. They worked quickly and in a strange uncanny silence.
Edmund and Captain Welfare were both on deck, already dressed. They stood together watching the crew, and speaking almost in whispers with an unwonted look of anxiety on their faces. Captain Welfare kept searching the shore with his telescope.