t were shut.

Moussa Isa was tougher than an Indian chicken.

Near Aden his proprietors were captured by an officious and
unsympathetic police (Moussa was sent to what he dreamed to be Heaven
and later perceived to be a hospital) and while they went to jail, a
number of bristly-haired Teutonic gentlemen at the Freidrichstrasse,
Arab gentlemen at Muscat, and Afghan gentlemen at Cabul, were made to
exercise the virtue of patience. So the would-be murderers of John Robin
Ross-Ellison Ilderim Dost Mahommed unintentionally saved him from jail,
but never received his acknowledgments....

Discharged from the hospital, Moussa became his own master, a gentleman
at large, and, for a time, prospered in the coal-trade.

He steered a coal-lighter that journeyed between the shore and the
ships.

One day he received a blow, a curse, and an insult, from the _maccudam_
or foreman of the gang that worked in the boat which he steered. Neither
blows nor curses were of any particular account to Moussa, but this man
Sulemani, a nondescript creature of no particular race, and only a man
in the sense that he was not a woman nor a quadruped, had called him
"_Hubshi_" Woolly One. Had called Moussa Isa of the Somal a _Hubshi_, as
though he had been a common black nigger. And, of course, it was
intentional, for even this eater of dogs and swine and lizards knew the
great noble, civilized and cultured Somal, Galla, Afar and Abyssinian
people from niggers. Even an English hide-and-head-buying tripper and
_soi-disant_ big-game hunter knew a Zulu from a Hottentot, a Masai from
a Wazarambo, and a Somali from a Nigger!

The only question was as to _how_ the scoundrel should be killed, for
he was large and strong, and never far from a shovel, crow-bar,
boat-hook or some weapon. Not much hope of being able to fasten on his
throat like a young leopard on a dibatag, kudu or impala buck.

As Moussa sat behind him at the tiller, he would regard the villain's
neck with interest, his fat neck, just below and behind the big ear.

If he only had a knife--such as the beauty that once cut his throat--or
even a scrap of iron or of really hard pointed wood, honour could be
satisfied and a stain removed from the scutcheon of Moussa Isa of the
Somal race, insulted.

One lucky night he got his next scar, the fine one that ornamented his
cheek-bone, and a really serviceable weapon of offence against the
offender Sulemani.

On this auspicious night, a festive