charming and desirable a retreat the place was in itself,--apart from
its ignorant and stupid inhabitants.

Expecting a kind of torture-house wherein he would be starved, sweated,
thrashed by brutal _kourbash_-wielding overseers, he found the most
palatial and comfortable of clubs, a place of perfect peace, safety,
and ease, where one was kindly treated by those in authority,
sumptuously fed, luxuriously lodged, and provided with pleasant
occupation, attractive amusements and reasonable leisure.

He had always heard and believed that the English were mad, and now he
knew it.

As a punishment for murder he had got a birching that merely tickled
him, and a free ticket to seven years' board, lodging, clothing,
lighting, medical care, instruction and diversion!

_Wow_!

Were it not for the presence of the insolent, ignorant, untravelled,
inexperienced, soft-living, lily-livered dogs of inhabitants, the place
was the Earthly Paradise. They were the crocodile in the ointment.

A young Brahmin, son of a well-paid Government servant, and incarcerated
for forgery and theft, was his most annoying persecutor. He was at great
pains to expectorate and murmur "_Hubshi_" in accents of abhorrent
contempt, whenever Moussa Isa chanced between the wind and his nobility.

The first time, Moussa replied with pitying magnanimity and all
reasonableness:--

"I am not a _Hubshi_, but a Somali, which is quite different--even as a
lion is different from a jackal or a man from an ape".

To which the Brahmin replied but:--

"_Hubshi_," and pointed out that there was danger of Moussa Isa's shadow
touching him, if Moussa were not careful.

"I must kill you if you call me _Hubshi_, understanding that I am of the
Somals," said Moussa Isa.

"_Hubshi_," would the Brahmin reply and loudly bewail his evil Luck
which had put him in the power of the accursed Feringhi Government--a
Government that compelled a Brahmin to breathe the same air as a filthy
negro dog, a Woolly One of Africa, barely human and most untouchable, a
living Contamination ... and Moussa cast about for a weapon.

His first opportunity arose when he found the Brahmin, who was in the
book-binding and compositor department, working one day in the same
gardening-gang with himself.

He had but a watering-can by way of offensive weapon, but good play can
be made with a big iron watering-can wielded in the right spirit and the
right hand.

Master Brahmin was feebly tapping the