Jakoub came out in the dinghy and was aboard in a few minutes.
Captain Welfare met him, and coming aft announced, with a look of relief, that the baggage camels and one for me were only a mile or so behind Jakoub.
“We’re lucky,” he said, “for I think there is a land breeze coming up, and the sooner we’re out of this the better. I only hope for your sake, Mr. Davoren, it isn’t a ‘khamsin.’ I’d be sorry if you made the acquaintance of the desert in a sand-storm.”
I went below to finish my packing. Hassan showed me with pride the hamper of provisions and wines he had provided for the journey, together with two great water-jars.
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.
“Let me introduce you to your dragoman,” he said.
Then as the man looked up with a smile of insufferable insolence, I saw that it was Jakoub!
He was not merely disguised by clothes; it was the total change of the consummate artist. It seemed that he was another man. He had deliberately revealed himself by his smile, and when that faded from his face, it was impossible even to think of him as Jakoub, utterly impossible to recognise him.