“See here,” he said, “I’m not a thief, though perhaps you think I pulled out that jewelry purse on purpose.  It was an accident, Rad, so I’ll forgive your hastiness.  But your Worship mustn’t pull out cutlery on me.  I’ll not stand that from any man living.  That’s right, put it up.  Back goes the pistol into its pocket, and now we’re friends again.  Pick up the pearls yourself, and then you’ll be certain I haven’t grabbed any, and then send one of your men to fetch my mate and do as I want.  You’re wasting a great deal of my time, Rad el Moussa, over a very simple job.”

The Arab gathered the pearls again into the pouch and put it back to its place among his clothes.  His face had grown savage and lowering, but it was clear that this little spitfire of a sailor, with his handy pistol, daunted him.  Kettle, who read these signs, was not insensible to the compliment they implied, but at the same time he grew, if anything, additionally cautious.  He watched his man with a cat-like caution, and when Rad called a slave and gave him orders in fluent Arabic, he made him translate his commands forthwith.

Rad el Moussa protested that he had ordered nothing more than the carrying out of his visitor’s wishes.  But it seemed to Kettle that he protested just a trifle too vehemently, and his suspicions deepened.

He tapped his pistol in its resting-place, and nodded his head meaningly.  “You’ve friends in this town,” he said, “and I dare say you’ll have a goodish bit of power in your small way.  I’ve neither, and I don’t deny that if you bring up all your local army to interfere, I may have a toughish fight of it; but whatever happens to me in the long run, you may take it as straight from yours truly that you’ll go to your own funeral if trouble starts.  So put that in your hookah and smoke it, tintacks, and give me the other tube.”

Captain Kettle was used to the dilatory ways of the East, and he was prepared to wait, though never doubting that Murray would be surrendered to him in due time, and he would get his own way in the end.  So he picked up one of the snaky tubes of the great pipe, and put the amber mouthpiece between his lips; and there for an hour the pair of them squatted on the divan, with the hookah gurgling and reeking between them.  From time to time a slave-girl came and replenished the pipe with tobacco or fire as was required.  But these were the only interruptions, and between whiles they smoked on in massive silence.

At the end of that hour, the man-slave who had been sent out with the message re-entered the room and delivered his tidings.  Rad el Moussa in his turn passed it on.  Murray was even then waiting in the justice chamber, so he said, at the further side of the house, and could be taken away at once.  Kettle rose to his feet, and the Arab stood before him with bowed head and folded arms.

Captain Kettle began to feel shame for having pressed this man too hardly.  It seemed that he had intended to act honestly all along, and the suspiciousness of his behavior doubtless arose from some difficulty of custom or language.  So the sailor took the Rad’s limp hand in his own and shook it cordially, and at the same time made a handsome apology for his own share of the misunderstanding.