ntry
was the home of fire and sword, the oasis-fields yielding nothing but
corpses, the wells choked with dead ... red slaughter, black pestilence,
starvation, misery and death, where had been green cultivation, fenced
villages, the sound of the quern and the well-wheel, the song of women
and the cry of the ploughman to his oxen. News and comments which did
nothing to lessen the pride and insolence of the Jubaland tribesmen, of
the Wak tribesmen, of the bold Zubhier sons of the desert, nor to strike
terror to the hearts of the murderers of Captain Aylmer and Mr. Jenner,
of slave-traders, game-poachers, raiders, wallowers in slaughter....

Another very noticeable and remarkable scar broke the fine lines and
smooth contours of Moussa's throat and another memory was as indelibly
established in his mind as was the said scar on his flesh.

At any time that he fingered the horrible ridged cicatrice, he could see
the boundless ocean and the boundless blue sky from a wretched cranky
canoe-shaped boat, in which certain Arab, Somali, Negro, and other
gentlemen were proceeding all the way from near Berbera to near Aden
with large trustfulness in Allah and with certain less creditable goods.
It was a long, unwieldy vessel which ten men could row, one could steer
with a broad oar, and a small three-cornered sail could keep before the
wind.

But the various-clad crew of this cranky craft were gentlemen all, who,
beyond running up the string-tied sail to the clothes-prop mast, or
taking a trick at the wheel--another clothes-prop with a large disc of
wood at the water-end, were far above work.

Trusting in Allah and Mohammed his Prophet is a lot easier than rowing a
lineless, blunt-nosed, unseaworthy boat beneath a tropical sun. So they
trusted in God, and permitted Moussa Isa, slave-boy, to do all that it
was humanly possible for him to do.

Moussa did all that was expected of him, but not so Allah and Mohammed
his Prophet.

The gentle breeze that (sometimes) carries you steadily over a glassy
sea straight up the forty-fifth meridian of east longitude from Berbera
to Aden in the month of October, failed these worthy trustful Argonauts,
and they were becalmed.

But Time is made for slaves, and the only slave upon the Argosy was
Moussa Isa, and so the becalming was neither here nor there. The cargo
would keep (if kept dry) for many a long day--and the greater the delay
in delivery, the greater the impatience of the consignees an