"My daughter eats not as much as a camel, and the English want not a camel every day."
The stranger, fat and comfortable-looking, with a certain amount of opulent Oriental good looks, waved his hand with a lordly gesture.
"Let it not be said that Balloon is an oppressor of the poor. Give me the pearl, and this knife shall go with the camel, also this piece of blue carpet—a noble offer, my brother; where will you find such another?"
He drew from his crimson sash a longish knife, keen-bladed, with trueblue, Eastern steel, and having a good bone-handle, on which the fingers clasped easily. The other took the knife and gazed at it intently.
"'Tis but a poor thing," he said at last, indifferently thrusting it into the cloths twisted round his waist. "Yet the camel and the carpet may suit me, and, as you say, you need not the girl at present, I will agree, as I am a poor man, and the poor are ever under the heel of the rich. The girl shall be sent to your house on your return."
"I go now northwards, and shall return by the full moon; disappoint me not, Krino or it shall be evil for you."
"I disappoint no man," replied Krino calmly, taking over from the other the string of the camel, and the fine beast turned its dark, soft head, and looked with liquid eyes on its new owner.
The sky began to show an orange and crimson glow behind the palms, and many cooking-fires now gleamed like spots of blood upon the sand, and the figures still came and went, and talked and bartered, for the goods were not nearly all sold, and the heaps of fine corn were still high in many places, and the fair would go on to-morrow and the next day. But Krino got up and took his way homeward, exulting over his bargain, and leading the camel.
At the same hour, lower down the Nile, at Omdurman, the river lay calm now, without a ripple, and bathed in gold; a stream of liquid gold it seemed, asleep between its deep-green banks, and only now and then did a white-sailed felucca glide by in the golden evening light.
Two figures came down from the desert to the Nile out of the flat, heated air of the plain to the divine freshness by the water. Here, in the cool, golden light, they paused slow and reluctant to part.