noon
He too was a missionary , and had come to warn and to save them from Christianity and all its corollaries -- silk hats , piano playing , newspapers , and patent medicines . The English woman argued with him plaintively ; the husband pressed a bundle of tracts upon him ; and this very English couple hoped he would come and see them when he returned to town . Mike thanked them , insisting , however , that he would never leave his beloved desert , or desert his friends . Next day , however , he forgot to fall on his knees at noon , and outside the encampment stood looking in the direction whither the missionaries had gone . A strange sadness seemed to have fallen upon him ; he cared no more for plans for slave-trading in the interior , or plunder in the desert . The scent of the white woman 's skin and hair was in his nostrils ; the nostalgia of the pavement had found him , and he knew he must leave the desert . One morning he was missed in the Sahara , and a fortnight after he was seen in the Strand , rushing towards Lubini 's .