He knotted the end of the rope into a double bowline (a bowline on the bight, he called it) which just held six of our packing-cases securely.
“Now I think we’ve earned a drink,” he said quite cheerfully, as he switched on the light again, and filled a couple of tumblers.
“We shall have to work in our socks and move about as little as possible,” he explained. “As soon as Welfare is ready I want you to hand me the cases. I’ll put them on the parapet and get them slung. You must hang on to the rope and take the strain when I get them over the side. Then lower slowly. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly.”
“I’m sorry to give you so much of the hard work, but I must see to the slinging myself. If a case slipped and fell—well, that would about close the operation.”
“I don’t mind the work,” I assured him, “I only wish we were at it.”
“It won’t be long now. The café is shutting up.”
I looked out of the window. Tired waiters were dragging in chairs from the pavement, and whisking the stained cloths off the very tables at which a few guests lingered, reluctant to leave. Others were closing shutters with a rattle.
The moonlight was steadily increasing, and now lit up the pink and yellow plaster of the tall shabby houses that faced the sea between us and the native quarter. It lit the minarets of a couple of third-rate mosques behind the houses, giving them an hour of delicacy and beauty which the crude sun denied them. The lamps along the sea-front paled, and the lights in windows disappeared one by one. The last tram crashed by, and a belated gharry passed with some shouting youths in it. Then silence settled down on the city as the moon raised herself above the buildings east of us, and “with delight looked round her when the heavens were bare.”
Edmund noiselessly nicked the switch up and down three or four times, and lighting a cigarette came back to the window where we waited together in silence.