and avenge insults? Unless he were now tried
for murder and suicide, and sentenced to hard labour in Aden Jail, he
would go on murdering until they did send him there. If they said,
"Well, you shan't go there, whatever you do," he would kill himself. If
he could get no sort of weapon he would starve himself (he did not in
his ignorance quote the gentle and joyous Pankhurst family) or hold his
breath. So they had better send him, and that was all he had got to say
about it.

"Send him for trial before the City Magistrate and recommend that he go
to Aden Jail at once, before he hurts somebody else," said the native
members of the Committee. "Why should we be troubled with the
off-scourings of Aden?"

"Certainly not," opined the Collector of Duri. A pretty state of affairs
if every criminal were to be allowed to select his own place of
punishment, and to terrorize any penitentiary that had the misfortune to
lack favour in his sight. Let the boy be well flogged for the assault
and attempted suicide, and then let him rejoin the ordinary gangs and
classes. It was the Superintendent's duty to watch his charges and keep
discipline in what was, after all, a school.

"Sir, he is one violent and dangerous character and will assault the
peaceful and mild. Yea--he may even attack _me_," objected the babu.

"Are we to understand that you admit your inability to maintain order in
this Reformatory?" inquired the Director of Public Instruction from the
Chair.

Anything but that. They were to understand, on the contrary, that the
babu was respectfully a most unprecedented disciplinarian.

"You don't expect cock angels in a Reformatory, y' know," said the
engineer, suddenly awaking to light a fat black cheroot. "Got to use
the--ah--strong hand;--on their--ah--_you_ know," and he resumed his
slumbers, puffing mechanically and unconsciously at his cheroot.

So Moussa Isa was flogged and sent back to gardening, lessons and
drawing.

Yes--the Somali was taught drawing. Not mere utilitarian drawing-to-scale
and making plans and elevations, but "freehand"-drawing, the reproducing
of meaningless twirly curves and twiddly twists from symmetrical
conventional "copies". He copied copies and drew lines--but never copied
things, nor drew things. In time he could, with infinite labour, produce
a copy of a flat "copy" that a really observant eye could identify with
the original, but had you asked him to draw his foot or the door of the
room,