You're looking at the wrong man.

Observe the other one." I was more than ever sure I was not mistaken.

Stately gesture, dignity, complexion, attitude--to say nothing of his Bedouin array and the steadiness with which he kept his dark eyes fixed on the smaller man he was talking to, had laid the stamp of the desert on the taller man from head to heel.
"That tall man is an American officer in the British army.
Doesn't look the part, eh?
They say he was the first American to be granted a commission without any pretense of his being a Canadian.

They accepted him as an American.

It was a case of that or nothing.