This event had been implied in the series of heads and tails the golden coin of Barkut had turned up when he spun it for decisions on how he should prepare for the trip by sea. All this uproar was consoling confirmation of the homing tendency of the ten-dirhim piece. He smoked beatifically, while out on the dark harbor water one small boat manned by cutthroats went raging after another small boat manned by a sneak thief, and the crew of the bakhil listened between cursings to the sounds on the water.

Far off, there was a howl of fury. Still farther, a triumphant yell of derision. The small boat of the bakhil came back in a thick fog of sulphurous language, Tony’s late interpreter evidently having made the shore and gotten away with his loot.

The boat’s crew scrambled to the deck. The boat itself was made fast overside. There was much muttered talk. Then men came astern to where Tony smoked in blissful excitement. They circled him deliberately. He snapped his cigarette lighter. Its glow showed him the villainous bearded faces of the bakhil’s crew. Hairy chests and ragged garments. Knives gleaming and ready.

And the lighter’s flame showed them Tony, puffing joyously on a cigarette, with one hand holding the lighter with its flickering flame, and the other holding a cocked revolver.

There was a pause without words.

Then a launch’s internal combustion engine caught somewhere. It began to run with a sort of purring roar. A harbor launch. A police launch, probably, ready to investigate the howls of fury on the harbor’s dark waters. If Tony were murdered here and now, his body might have to be slid overboard still unrobbed, and even that would be dangerous. More, he might kill somebody first.

The sound of the police-launch motor moved across the harbor. A voice grunted urgently on the bakhil’s deck, and the group before Tony melted. Men swarmed to ropes and spars. The great lateen sail rose creaking against the sky, and forward, men hauled feverishly at a crude windlass to lift the bakhil’s anchor. Then slowly, slowly, slowly, in what were hardly catspaws of wind off the land, the bakhil gathered way.