i_, however, passed around the
deck--that word so flattering to a great race, which once meant Frank
but which now, in one form or another, describes for the people of
western Asia the people of Europe and their cousins beyond the seas.
Among the friends of the jinn, of whom as it happened only two were
Europeans, there also passed an explanatory word. But although they
pronounced the strange oarsmen to be Lurs, they caused their jinni to
cease his panting, so struck were they by the appearance of the
high-beaked barge.

The two craft drifted abreast of each other about midway of the sunken
basin. As they did so, one of the Europeans in the motor-boat, a stocky
black-moustached fellow in blue overalls, wearing in place of the
regulation helmet of that climate a greasy black _beret_ over one ear,
lifted his hand from the wheel and called out the Arabic salutation of
the country:

"Peace be unto you!"

"And to you, peace!" responded a deep voice from the doorway of the
deck-house. It was evident that the utterer of this friendly antiphon
was not a Lur. Fairer, taller, stouter, and older than his wild-looking
crew, he was also better dressed--in a girdled robe of gray silk, with a
striped silk scarf covering his hair and the back of his neck in the
manner of the Arabs. A thick brown beard made his appearance more
imposing, while two scars across his left cheek, emerging from the
beard, suggested or added to something in him which might on occasion
become formidable. As it was he stepped forward with a bow and
addressed a slim young man who sat in the stern of the motor-boat.
"Shall we pass as Kinglake and the Englishman of _Eothen_ did in the
desert," asked the stranger, smiling, in a very good English, "because
they had not been introduced? Or will you do me the honor to come on
board my--ark?"

The slim young man, whose fair hair, smooth face, and white clothes made
him the most boyish looking of that curious company, lifted his white
helmet and smiled in return.

"Why not?" he assented. And, becoming conscious that his examination of
this surprising stranger, who looked down at him with odd light eyes,
was too near a stare, he added: "What on earth is your ark made of, Mr.
Noah?"

What she was made of, as a matter of fact, was what heightened the
effect of remoteness she produced--a hard dark wood unknown to the lower
Karun, cut in lengths of not more than two or three feet and caulked
with reeds and mud.

"'