With him they were soon on the intimate terms of shipboard—­terms that commit one to nothing in the future when land is reached.  Although he was dressed like an Englishman, and on deck wore a straw hat with the word “Scott” inside it, he soon let them know that his name was Mahmoud Baroudi, that his native place was Alexandria, that he was of mixed Greek and Egyptian blood, and that he was a man of great energy and will, interested in many schemes, pulling the strings of many enterprises.

He spoke always with a certain polite but bold indifference, as if he cared very little what impression he made on others; and all the information that he gave about himself was dropped out in a careless, casual way that seemed expressive of his character.  The high rank, the great riches of his father he rather implied than definitely mentioned.  Only when he talked of his occupations was he more definite, more strongly personal.  Nigel gathered that he was essentially a man of affairs, had nothing in common with the typical lazy Eastern, who loves to sit in the sun, to suffer the will of Allah, and to fill the years with dreams; that he was cool, clear-headed, and full of the marked commercial ability characteristic of the modern Greek.  Whether this aptitude was combined with the sinuous cunning that is essentially Oriental Nigel did not know.  He certainly could not perceive it.  All that Baroudi said was said with clearness, and a sort of acute precision, whether he discussed the land question, the irrigation works on the Nile, the great boom of 1906, in which such gigantic fortunes were made, or the cotton and sugar industries, in both of which he was interested.  The impression he conveyed to Nigel was that he was born to “get on” in whatever he undertook, and that in almost any form of activity he could be a fine ally, or an equally fine opponent.  That he was fond of sport was soon apparent.  He spoke with an enthusiasm that was always mingled with a certain serene insouciance of the horses he had bred and of the races he had won in Alexandria and Cairo, of yachting, of big-game shooting up the Nile beyond Khartum in the country of the Shillouks, and of duck, pigeon, and jackal shooting in the Fayyum and on the sacred Lake of Kurun.

Nigel found him an excellent fellow, the most sympathetic and energetic man of Eastern blood whom he had ever encountered.  Mrs. Armine spoke of him more temperately; he did not seem to interest her, and Nigel was confirmed by her lack of appreciation in an idea that had already occurred to him.  He believed that Baroudi was a man who did not care for women, except, no doubt, as the occasional and servile distractions of an unoccupied hour in the harem.  He was always very polite to Mrs. Armine, but when he talked he soon, as if almost instinctively, addressed himself to Nigel; and once or twice, when Mrs. Armine left them alone together over their coffee and cigars, he seemed to Nigel to become another man, to expand almost into geniality, to be not merely self-possessed—­that faculty never failed him—­but to be more happily at his ease, more racy, more ready for intimacy.  Probably he was governed by the Oriental’s conception of woman as an inferior sex, and was unable to be quite at home in the complete equality and ease of the English relation with women.