enough, but when the face flushes with the unwonted exertion, your deaf friend thinks you are getting angry, and follows suit. This is precisely what Abbajee did. He showed me his specimens, and I bawled into his ear, "Mica — not gold, not silver — mica;" and he yelled back, "Gold, silver, gold." The noisy discussion, accompanied as it was with gesticulations, attracted other prisoners around us, and Nahoum went off in high dudgeon.
When he had gone, a few of my friends asked why I did not offer to assist him, and even if the thing was a failure, they thought I was clever enough to find something else to do; but, as they said, "promise anything provided it gets you out of the Saier." There were excellent reasons, but which I might not confide to them, why any work I undertook to do should occupy months, and, if necessary, years in completion. To offer to assist Nahoum in extracting gold and silver from such stones meant that two or three weeks at the outside would evidence our failure to do so, and then it was Saier again for me. Whether any work I undertook to do for the Khaleefa was to end in success or failure was immaterial to me; but it was very material that the result, whatever it was to be, should not be attained for months, as by the time my guides returned, the conditions surrounding my escape might have so changed as to necessitate an entire change in plans and programme. They might even entail the guides' return to Cairo or the frontier, and this occupied months. But the advice to accept Nahoum's proposals and trust
