"Ye shall judge, Adjia Simonidas."
"Is this Arabic? It sounds like Greek," said Kit.
"Simon's from Aleppo," Macallister rejoined. "When ye trade in the Levant, ye use Arabic, Turkish, Italian and Greek, and whiles ye mix the lot. There's no' a sailor's café between Suez and Smyrna I dinna ken. But ye're a doubting creature. Weel, Simon——"
He began to talk and the interpreter leaned against the mast and laughed.
"He is truly droll," Simon remarked in French. "But I think he is safe with the Moors. Good Moslems believe that Allah guards such as him."
Kit lighted a cigarette. He had undertaken an awkward job and was sternly serious. Mack was, of course, a good sort, but when he was not engaged in the engine-room his talents were for something like comic opera. Kit would frankly sooner he had stopped on board Mossamedes. For all that, he had known Mack's reckless humour useful when sober thought was not, and he must be resigned. Mack was on board and would not go back.
When Kit had smoked his cigarette he got two of the men to wash Cayman's boat and rowed across the harbour to a coaling wharf. The clerks had gone, but Kit knew how the hose key worked and brought back the boat loaded with fresh water as deep as she would float. Then he looked at his watch and going to the patron's small cabin tried to sleep.
The rattle of chain woke him and he went on deck. Day was breaking and a cold wind blew off the land. Mist rolled about the mountains and in the background Las Palmas glimmered against dark volcanic rocks. Its outline was blurred and the white houses were indistinct; the town looked ghostly and unsubstantial. In the harbour, steamers with gently-swaying masts floated on the smooth swell. Nobody moved about their decks and all was very quiet but for the surf that beat against the mole.
Some of the crew began to hoist the mainsail. They moved slackly, as if they were half-asleep, their bare feet made no noise, and Kit liked to hear the thud of the canvas they threw off the boom. Then blocks began to rattle, and when the gaff was up the sail flapped in the wind. They left the peak hanging and went forward to hoist the jib. The noise of running wire and chain halyard was cheerful, and Kit tried to rouse himself.
There is something that moves the imagination about a large steamer leaving port. One gets a sense of organised effort, of force in man's control and the triumph of his inventions. Kit had vaguely felt that the correillo's sailing with the mails on board was, so to speak, a social function of some importance to all. To mark a mail-boat's departure by a gun or detonating rocket was proper. But Cayman's start was flat and dreary. She must steal out of harbour lest she be stopped; and Kit, shivering in the cold wind, was daunted.