as streets, he asked the
consul why every one had smiled.

The consul laughed evasively.

"It's a local joke," he explained. "A lot of men come here for reasons
best kept to themselves, and they all say what you said, that they've
come to shoot big game. It's grown to be a polite way of telling a man
it is none of his business."

"But I didn't mean it that way," protested Hemingway. "I really have
been after big game for the last eight months."

In the tone one uses to quiet a drunken man or a child, the consul
answered soothingly.

"Of course," he assented--"of course you have." But to show he was not
hopelessly credulous, and to keep Hemingway from involving himself
deeper, he hinted tactfully: "Maybe they noticed you came ashore with
only one steamer trunk and no gun-cases."

"Oh, that's easily explained," laughed Hemingway. "My heavy luggage--"

The consul had reached his house and his "boy" was pounding upon it
with his heavy staff.

"Please don't explain to me," he begged. "It's quite unnecessary. Down
here we're so darned glad to see any white man that we don't ask
anything of him except that he won't hurry away. We judge them as they
behave themselves here; we don't care what they are at home or why they
left it."

Hemingway was highly amused. To find that he, a respectable,
sport-loving Hemingway of Massachusetts, should be mistaken for a
gun-runner, slave-dealer, or escaping cashier greatly delighted him.

"All right!" he exclaimed. "I'll promise not to bore you with my past,
and I agree to be judged by Zanzibar standards. I only hope I can live
up to them, for I see I am going to like the place very much."

Hemingway kept his promise. He bored no one with confidences as to his
ancestors. Of his past he made a point never to speak. He preferred
that the little community into which he had dropped should remain
unenlightened, should take him as they found him. Of the fact that a
college was named after his grandfather and that on his father's
railroad he could travel through many States, he was discreetly silent.

The men of Zanzibar asked no questions. That Hemingway could play a
stiff game of tennis, a stiffer game of poker, and, on the piano, songs
from home was to them sufficient recommendation. In a week he had
become one of the most popular members of Zanzibar society. It was as
though he had lived there always. Hemingway found himself reaching out
to grasp the warmth of t