I’m only fit to run the commissariat, and see that he gets enough to eat, and has a safe camel, and so on. Why doesn’t some one else help him? He’s working for humanity. Give him half a chance, and Haroun-al-Raschid won’t be in it. Kaid trusts him, depends on him, stands by him, but doesn’t seem to know how to help him when help would do most good. The Saadat does it all himself; and if it wasn’t that the poor devil of a fellah sees what he’s doing, and cottons to him, and the dervishes and Arabs feel he’s right, he might as well leave. But it’s just there he counts. There’s something about him, something that’s Quaker in him, primitive, silent, and perceptive--if that’s a real word--which makes them feel that he’s honest, and isn’t after anything for himself. Arabs don’t talk much; they make each other understand without many words. They think with all their might on one thing at a time, and they think things into happening--and so does he. He’s a thousand years old, which is about as old-fashioned as I mean, and as wise, and as plain to read as though you’d write the letters of words as big as a date-palm. That’s where he makes the running with them, and they can read their title clear to mansions in the skies! You should hear him talk with Ebn Ezra Bey--perhaps you don’t know of Ezra? He was a friend of his Uncle Benn, and brought the news of his massacre to England, and came back with the Saadat. Well, three days ago Ebn Ezra came, and there came with him, too, Halim Bey, the Egyptian, who had brought the letters to us from Cairo. Elm Ezra found him down the river deserted by his niggers, and sick with this new sort of fever, which the Saadat is knocking out of time. And there he lies, the Saadat caring for him as though he was his brother. But that’s his way; though, now I come to think of it, the Saadat doesn’t suspect what I suspect, that Halim Bey brought word from Nahoum to our sheikhs here to keep us here, or lose us, or do away with us. Old Ebn Ezra doesn’t say much himself, doesn’t say anything about that; but he’s guessing the same as me. And the Saadat looks as though he was ready for his grave, but keeps going, going, going. He never seems to sleep. What keeps him alive I don’t know. Sometimes I feel clean knocked out myself with the little I do, but he’s a travelling hospital all by his lonesome.