It was then that I began to hate him. His manner was polite, in fact obsequious, but from the beginning of our acquaintance I felt that he regarded me as a sort of joke, as something utterly negligible. In the covert insolence of his handsome face I thought I read too that were I ever in his way he would see me thrown overboard as if I were a rat.
I wondered at Edmund’s easy-going toleration of such a man.
This was, however, my only disagreeable impression on board the Astarte and, as I had no occasion to see the man, it soon passed from my mind as I fell into the mood of the cheerfully passing hours aboard ship.
The weather kept fine, and the breeze held throughout the day and the night.
Intent on picking up a little colloquial Arabic, I spent a good deal of time talking to the Arab who acted as waiter and servant in the saloon. Although I had never before heard the language spoken, I had in the course of my researches gained some little acquaintance with the terrors of Arabic grammar, and even some vocabulary, which I now found I pronounced all wrong.
It was a relief to find that the extraordinary complexities of the language, as written by scholars, disappeared from the tongue as spoken, and I hoped it would not be impossible to compass a passable imitation of their weird gutturals and deep chest tones.
Hassan, as our servant was called, professed to be astonished at my proficiency, and I was encouraged by finding that I could soon pick out some words and phrases in listening to the jabber of the Arab crew.
Edmund was often able to help me in points I could not well explain to Hassan, although he averred he only knew enough of the language “to curse the niggers in.”
To Captain Welfare my progress was miraculous. He said that to have been able to speak and understand the language would once have been worth a thousand pounds to him, but he had been told it was derived from camel-talk, and had not believed it was possible for a Christian to learn it.
He had all the ignorant Englishman’s feeling that there is something undignified in using any language spoken by what he calls generically “natives,” which is curiously mingled with profound respect for anyone else who can do it.