Free The Doomed Oasis by Hammond; Innes Page B

alaikum and a few more words of Arabic. And get along to the paint-shop and put some stain on your face and hands. Your face is about as pink as a white baby’s bottom.”
    Dressing up as an Arab for the first time in his life helped to pass the time, but still the long hours of the night stretched ahead. He lay awake a long time thinking about what the morrow would bring and about the man he hadn’t known was his father till that tragic day. And then suddenly it was light, and almost immediately, it seemed, one of the Arab crew came down to tell him the sambuq had been sighted. He listened then, waiting, tense and expectant. And then the pulse of the engines slowed and finally died away. This was it—the moment of irrevocable departure. His hand touched the brass hilt of the great curved, flat-bladed knife at his girdle. He checked the kaffyah , made certain that the black agal was in its place, circling his head. He went quickly up to the after well-deck and waited in the shelter of the main-deck ladder. The rope ladder was over the side opposite Number Three hatch, one of the crew waiting there to help him over. The faint chug of a diesel sounded in the still morning air, coming slowly nearer. He heard the bump of the dhow as it came alongside, the guttural cry of Arab voices, and then the man by the ladder was beckoning him.
    He went out quickly with his head down, hidden by his kaffyah . A dark-skinned hand caught his arm, steadied him as he went over the bulwarks. Glancing quickly up, he caught a glimpse of the Captain leaning with his elbows on the rail of the bridge wing and below, on the boat deck, a short, tubby man in a pale dressing-gown standing watching. And after that he could see nothing but the ship’s rusty side.
    Hands reached up, caught him as he jumped to the worn wood deck of the dhow. He called out a greeting in Arabic as he had been told and at the same moment he heard the distant clang of the engine-room telegraph. The beat of the Emerald Isle ’s engines increased and the hull plates began to slide past, a gap opening between himself and the ship. He turned away to hide his face and found himself on a long-prowed craft built of battered wood, worn smooth by the years and bleached almost white by the torrid heat of the Persian Gulf. A single patched sail curved above it like the dirty wing of a goose hanging dead in the airless morning. The sea around was still as a mirror and white like molten glass, and then the swirl of the ship’s screws shattered it.
    There were three men on the sambuq and only the naukhuda , or captain, wore a turban as well as a loincloth. He was an old man with a wisp of a grey moustache and a few grey hairs on his chin, which he stroked constantly. The crew was composed of a smooth-faced boy with a withered arm and a big, barrel-chested man, black as a Negro, with a satin skin that rippled with every movement. The naukhuda took David’s hand in his and held it for a long time, whilst the other two crowded close, staring at his face, feeling his clothes—six brown eyes gazing at him, full of curiosity. A flood of questions, the old man using the deferential sahib , legacy of India. Whenever David said anything, all three listened respectfully. But it was no good. He couldn’t seem to make himself understood.
    At length he gave it up and, judging that it would be safe now to turn his head to take a last look at the Emerald Isle , he was appalled to find that she had vanished utterly, swallowed in the humid haze of the day’s beginning. For a time he could still hear the beat of her engines, but finally even that was gone and he was alone with his three Arabs on a flat calm sea that had an oily shimmer to its hard, unbroken surface.
    He felt abandoned then, more alone than he’d ever been in his life before. But it was a mood that didn’t last, for in less than an hour the haze thinned and away to port the vague outline of a mass