He got up, signed that the audience was over, and went into his tent. Simon's eyes twinkled.
"Perhaps he thinks I know too much, and I know something. All the same, I will not come back. In Morocco one runs risks and I have not got paid. At Cairo the tourists are curious about the East and some are generous. They know Simon at the big hotel. I will return."
Kit went off to the shade of the ruined hut. Perhaps it was strange, but he trusted the haughty Berber and he had not altogether trusted Simon. On the whole, he thought the fellow's plan was good. If the tourists at Cairo were like some at Las Palmas, Simon would be a useful guide about the town at night. Kit, himself, would sooner be a robber like the dark-skinned chief. Then Macallister sat down opposite and began to clean his pipe.
"If I kent where to steal a handy bit steamboat, yon headman and me would make a bonnie pair o' pirates, but I've no' much use for camels," he remarked. "Weel. I alloo ye took a very proper line wi' him."
"I didn't see the line I ought to take. I was frank."
Macallister's eyes twinkled. "Just that! I'm no saying ye were plausible, but the headman's no' a fool; he saw ye were a simple weel-meaning body. Onyway, it's done with. We'll get off when Miguel comes."
Three days afterwards Miguel and Juan arrived, riding in a frame hung across a camel. The quartermaster got down awkwardly and stretched his arms and legs.
"But I am sore! It is like beating to windward in a plunging boat," he said and went up to Kit. "We were anxious, señor, the Moors are bad. But I did not bother very much. I knew you would come back for us, and my saint would guard you."
The blood came to Kit's skin. He said nothing, but gave Miguel his hand.