“M’abarafshee,” he answered, shaking his head, “bilyeto!” (ticket).
Certainly I must offer some excuse for being on board without a ticket. The lean form of the purser bending over me called up the memory of the Jaffa consul. I rummaged through my pockets, and, spreading out his second note to the ship’s agent, laid it in the purser’s hand. The consul’s yellow stationery bore a disconcerting contrast to the bundle of dark-blue tickets. The officer gave vent to his astonishment in an avalanche of Arabic.
“M’abarafshee!” I imitated.
He opened his mouth to launch a second avalanche, hesitated, scratched his head, and, with a shrug of the shoulders, went on gathering “bilyetos” from the native passengers.
Some time later he descended from the upper deck and, beckoning to me, led the way to the bridge. The steamer was preparing to get under way. The captain, a burly Briton, stormed back and forth across the ship, striving to give orders to the crew in such Arabic as he could muster, and bursting the bounds of that unnatural tongue with every fourth word, to berate the blockheads in forcible excerpts from the King’s—private—English. His eye fell upon me.
“Here,” he roared, profanely, ’tis true, but to the point, “what the bloody —— is all this?” and he waved the now ragged note in my face.
“Why, that’s a note from the Amurican consil in Jaffa, sir, sayin’ I want t’ ship for Egypt.”
The purple rage on the skipper’s face, the result of his attempt to set forth in Arabic thoughts only expressible in English, subsided somewhat at the sound of his own tongue.
The Palestine beast of burden carrying an iron beam to a building in construction