ch was vast already. "Listen to me, Khamis, young son of Khamis bin
Abdullah; the Warori are bad, as you heard Moto say, but the Warori are
men, and I have heard a good Nazarene, one of the white men at Zanzibar,
say that all men are equal. If the Warori are men, and are lords of
their own soil, and if Arabs trouble them, or will not do them justice,
what great wrong are the Warori guilty of if they fight; and if they
catch Arabs prisoners in war, why should they not treat them as the
Arabs would treat the Warori? Answer me that."

"Why, Simba," asked the eldest of the sons of Mussoud, "do you know what
the sacred Kuran says? I remember what the good Imam has told me often:
`_Verily the fruit of the trees of Al Zakkum shall be the food of the
unbelievers, as the dregs of oil shall it boil in the bellies of the
damned, like the boiling of the hottest water. When ye encounter the
unbelievers strike off their heads until ye have made a great slaughter
among them, and bind them in bonds, and either give them a free
dismission afterwards or exact a ransom, until the war shall have laid
down its arms_.' And in another place the Kuran says, according to the
holy and learned Imam, `_And as to those who fight in defence of God's
true religion, God will not suffer their works to perish; he will guide
them, and will dispose their heart aright; and he will lead them into
paradise, of which he hath told them_.'"

"There, Simba," said Isa, triumphantly, "what do you think now of slaves
and true believers? Do you not think it right for us to take and
capture those who waylay us, and make them slaves for their perfidy and
savagery?"

"I think the same as before," answered Simba. "I do not know the Kuran
so well as Abdullah, it is true, but I know that the same God who gave
you sense and feeling gave the savages of Urori some sense and feeling
as well; but I should like to know what my young master Selim's thoughts
are upon these subjects."

"To tell you the simple truth would be to tell you that I never thought
much of these things," answered Selim, in a mild tone. "My father has
slaves, and my relations own a great number. They are all well looked
after, and I have never heard that they were much astonished at their
condition. I have seen slaves punished and killed; but they had done
wrong, and they deserved their punishment. Neither my father nor my
relations ever gave me to suppose that by keeping slaves they were
co