Kit, with some hesitation gave him the coin. He had known Macallister spoil a useful watch, and return another bearing the marks of the vice-jaws. Experimenting with watches had a strange charm for him, but sometimes he made a good job, and if he mended the pistol it might help. Macallister got to work with the coin and his big pocket knife, and the headman turned to Kit.
"I seized the men because your master cheated me. If I let them go, I will not get the goods he owes."
"You will not get the goods," Kit agreed. "My master is gone."
The headman and one of the others talked, and Simon said to Kit: "They think it is so. They have found out that Yusuf is gone. I expected something like this."
"Not long since I would have sold the men; I might have sold you all," the Berber resumed. "Now, however, this is perhaps not safe. We are not afraid of the soldiers, but we have enemies, and sometimes our neighbours take the white men's bribes."
"He is frank, but it is like that," Simon remarked. "In Africa, the white man's power is not his native soldiers. One tribe hates the next and foreign money rules the desert." He paused and shrugged. "It is possible the fellow would have sold us. Baccalao fishermen have vanished. At the wineshops the Spaniards tell stories—— But he wants to know why you bother about the sailors. They are not your servants."
Kit hesitated. He did not know the Berber's code and if he claimed his object was unselfish the fellow might think he had another. Yet he was not going to make up a plausible tale. Kit's anger was quick and hot. The brute had pondered selling white men like camels.
"Tell him I saw somebody must look for them. When his people tried to carry me off, I think one put me on board the boat. That's all," he said.
"Then, they have no rich friends who would pay you if you brought them back?" the chief asked.
"You have seen them!" Kit rejoined and indicated his companions. "They are men like these. Rich men don't labour in a steamer's boats."