"At last!" he said, after a long time, in the difficult voice of one amazed almost beyond words. The muscles of his lean, brown face were working visibly. His eyes had become inflamed, his fingers were twitching.
"At last!" he said again, as if finally convinced in spite of himself, and licked his lips.
But Captain Dove met his wickedest glance unwinkingly, and made him no answer at all.
For a moment longer they two stood gazing thus at each other, the onlookers silent and still. And then the big man's blazing eyes shifted to the face of the girl at Captain Dove's elbow. Sallie's veil had slipped to her chin, but she had been unconscious of that till then. She pulled it up across the bridge of her nose again hastily. The red-haired Emir's scowl had relaxed; he was scanning her with a very different expression to that he had shown Captain Dove, but one which alarmed her no less.
He turned to the group behind him and, at a word, it melted away. The onlookers in the distance also went about their own business again. A black slave-boy came staggering forward with a heavy chair, and set that down side by side with the other there. Captain Dove seated himself at once, without ceremony.
The Emir, biting his lip, followed suit, and sat for a time sunk in his own reflections. He seemed to have mastered for the moment his first almost overwhelming impulse at sight of that venerable-looking adventurer, and had evidently some other and much more pleasant idea in his mind.
"That's a high-stepping filly you've brought with you," said he at length in a puzzled tone, and glanced round at Sallie again. She was standing at Captain Dove's other shoulder, her head bent, her hands clasped before her, in helpless, patient suspense. Captain Dove had gruffly informed her, before they had left the ship, that she would be perfectly safe in his company, but even his own safety seemed to be hanging on a very slender thread.
"I wonder, now," the Emir went on, "if it's to seek trade that you've come ashore here again—after all these years." His face once more darkened, as if over some recollection that rankled sorely, but which he was doing his best to dismiss from his thoughts in the meantime.
"I've some trifles in hand that might interest you if it is trade you're after," said he, speaking amicably with an effort, "such truck as gold-dust, and jewels, and silk—and ivory, too, galore."
The black boy had come back with an unwieldy tray of a dull yellow metal on which were set two cool, moist, earthenware chatties and a couple of uncouth drinking-cups. Captain Dove, with unerring instinct, laid his hand on the flagon which held strong drink, poured out for himself a liberal helping of the sticky magia it contained, and swallowed that off without a word. After the Emir had also helped himself the boy would have carried the tray away, but Captain Dove bade him set it down and dealt him an indignant cuff, so that he fled empty-handed, with an anguished yelp.