"Right," said Ursula, smiling. "Lead on, Jacob." The boy showed all his white teeth. "Me Abdullah, mees," he said. "You follow me." "For goodness' sake, keep to the other side of the band," urged Muriel. The boy leading, the girls following, the Major and Paul were bound to go. Paul was eager enough. Jardine was less ready, and, with some knowledge, more apprehensive. "Good God, Kestern," he said, "this is more than I bargained for. You never know what you're in for here." It was impossible, however, to draw back easily now. The proprietor himself, an oiled smiling Syrian in evening dress, had come forward. With a magnificent gesture, he indicated a small table for four on the left, and waved Abdullah into the surrounding blackness. Jardine nodded to some ship's officers at a little distance, and seemed more relieved when he saw a sprinkling of women about them and even a group of ladies from the ship on the edge of the shadows. But they were too noticeably prominent for his liking. It was too late to move, however, and he bowed to the inevitable, giving orders for drinks to the Indian waiter, but with audible misgivings over that. "I'll order wine," he said. "We can see that the cork hasn't been tampered with, and that's less likely to poison you than anything else." "You're mighty cheerful, Major," laughed Muriel. "Well, Miss Lister, we're in for it now, anyway. Don't blame me." "I wouldn't have missed it for the world," put in Paul enthusiastically. "By Jove, Ursula, just look at that band! Did you ever see anything more comic in your life?" Paul shortly forgot the stage, or nearly so. It was the audience that interested him, and the great glow of light that lost itself in the black desert about and shone on strange Eastern faces that came and went on the shadow-line of its edge. It was unusual, too, to sit with that fantastic noise in one's ears and yet to be able to look out to the silence yonder under the serene stars. There were two semi-European women at a table near, also, to whom his eyes constantly if surreptitiously returned. Fat, bulging, in tawdry lace and imitation jewels, they were nevertheless smiling, gay, human, he thought, and one of them kept a motherly eye on a child of seven or eight in a sailor suit who would wander from her side. He leant forward to draw Ursula's attention to them. And then he saw that her eyes were fixed on the stage.