'Yes, I thought you'd like to know,' Dick put his arm round her shoulders. 'Early this morning when you were sleeping like a lamb, I was lying awake watching the metal work going a nice cherry red, and selecting that flat bit of iron to beat off the crew from your place in the dinghy when the ship burst into flames.'
Norah laughed. 'You think of everything,' she said. 'Why don't they put on a new boat?'
'Money.' Dick got up and took a turn aft, where he could hear the engines more clearly. He stood with his head cocked, listening. At last he shrugged his shoulders and came back to Norah.
'The territory's about bankrupt, and all the cash there is goes in building a new governor's palace to impress the noble savage.'
He sat down on his bed and fidgeted with the sheet.
'I believe you're right,' he said, 'the engines are about worn out. They say that at the end of every trip Alibaba reports to the Railway Workshops at Kigoma, something like this:—(he imitated the genial obsequiousness and urbane gesticulation of the Arab skipper)—'Yes, sir, thank you, sir, good run, sir. Boilers finish, sir. Want new one. No, sir? Very good, sir, start Wednesday, sir.'
Norah's deep laugh rang out. Dick's Irish blood made him a good mimic. Moreover, life since she left the farm was one long first day of the holidays, and anything was good for a laugh.
'I adore Alibaba,' she said, 'but I daren't think what his toilet will be, when he feels he knows us a little better.'
There was some ground for this apprehension. They had boarded the vessel, scrambling up a rope from her dinghy on to her dirty iron deck, to be welcomed by a corpulent, bowing figure clad in a khaki jacket buttoned up to the chin, new red fez, vast trousers once white, and patent leather boots. His pock-marked face had shone as he 'escorted them to their quarters,' a ceremony which consisted of kicking the deck clear of cooking utensils, baskets of meal, firewood, chickens and goats, and helping Changalilo erect the beds. But once under way, Alibaba's habit was to replace the new fez with a dirty skull cap of broderie anglaise, unbutton his jacket from top to bottom, unlace his boots largely and unhitch his trousers till they bellied menacingly.
In this negligé he moved slowly between a moribund Madeira chair, the wheel and the engine-room. Unlike any other skipper who ever sailed the lake, he ran night as well as day, feeling his way by some extra sense for squalls, islands, and rocks.