No.  Ships carry the “far-eye,” the magic instrument that makes the distant near, that brings things from miles away to within a few yards.  Doubtless telescopes were on them already.  Keep in a close group round the body, smuggle it under the palm-mats and make believe to have been trying to kindle a fire in an old kerosine-oil tin....  Signals of distress appeared and Moussa Isa disappeared.  The great steamer approached, slowed down, and came to a standstill beside the boat of the starving castaways.  From her cliff-like side the passengers, crowding the rails of her many decks, looked down with interest upon a prehistoric craft in which lay a number of poor emaciated blacks and Arabs, clad for the most part in scanty cotton rags.  These poor creatures feebly extended skinny hands and feebly raised quavering voices, as they begged for water and a little rice, only water and a little rice in the name of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate.  Their tins, lotahs and goat-skins were filled, bags of rice, bread and flour were lowered to them; a box of sugar and a packet of biscuit were added; and a gentle little rain of coins fell as though from Heaven.

Kodaks clicked, clergymen beamed, ladies said, “How sweetly picturesque—­poor dears”; the Captain murmured, “Damnedest scoundrels unhung—­but can’t leave ’em to starve”; the “poor dears” smiled largely and ate wolfishly; Moussa Isa bled, and the great steamer resumed her way.

“Pat” Brighte (she was Cleopatra Diamond Brighte who married Colonel Dearman of the Gungapur Volunteer Bines) found she had got a splendid snap-shot when her films were developed at Gungapur.  A little later she got another when the look-out saw, and a boat picked up, a man who was lying in a little dug-out or toni.  When able to speak, he told the serang[44] of the lascars that he was the sole survivor of a bunder-boat which had turned turtle and sunk.  He understood nothing but Hindustani....  Miss Brighte pitied the poor wretch but thought he looked rather horrid....

  [44] Native boatswain.

The hearts of the castaways were filled with contentment as their stomachs were filled with food, and so busily did they devote themselves to eating, drinking, and sleeping that they forgot all about Moussa Isa beneath the palm-mats.

When they chanced upon him he was just alive, and his wound was closed.  The attitude in which he had been dumped down upon the cargo (the ostensible and upper strata thereof, consisting of hides and salt, with a hint of ostrich-feathers, coffee, frankincense and myrrh) had favoured his chance of recovery, for, thanks to a friendly bundle, his head was pressed forward to his chest and the lips of the gaping wound in his throat were shut.

Moussa Isa was tougher than an Indian chicken.

Near Aden his proprietors were captured by an officious and unsympathetic police (Moussa was sent to what he dreamed to be Heaven and later perceived to be a hospital) and while they went to jail, a number of bristly-haired Teutonic gentlemen at the Freidrichstrasse, Arab gentlemen at Muscat, and Afghan gentlemen at Cabul, were made to exercise the virtue of patience.  So the would-be murderers of John Robin Ross-Ellison Ilderim Dost Mahommed unintentionally saved him from jail, but never received his acknowledgments....