No."

"Pipes and 'baccy."

Harold shook his head.

"Never could guess nothin'," said Disco, replacing the pipe, which he
had removed for a few moments from his lips; "I gives it up."

"What would you say to cotton cloth, and thick brass wire, and glass
beads, being the chief currency in Central Africa?" said Harold.

"You don't mean it, sir?"

"Indeed I do, and as these articles must be carried in large quantities,
if we mean to travel far into the land, there will be more bales and
coils than you and I could well carry in our waistcoat pockets."

"That's true, sir," replied Disco, looking earnestly at a couple of
negro slaves who chanced to pass along the neighbouring footpath at that
moment, singing carelessly. "Them poor critters don't seem to be so
miserable after all."

"That is because the nigger is naturally a jolly, light-hearted fellow,"
said Harold, "and when his immediate and more pressing troubles are
removed he accommodates himself to circumstances, and sings, as you
hear. If these fellows were to annoy their masters and get a thrashing,
you'd hear them sing in another key. The evils of most things don't
show on the surface. You must get behind the scenes to understand them.
You and I have already had one or two peeps behind the scenes."

"We have indeed, sir," replied Disco, frowning, and closing his fists
involuntarily, as he thought of Yoosoof and the dhow.

"Now, then," said Harold, rising, as Disco shook the ashes out of his
little black pipe, and placed that beloved implement in the pocket of
his coat, "let us return to the harbour, and see what chance there is of
getting a passage to the Zambesi, in an honest trading dhow--if there is
such a thing in Zanzibar."

On their way to the harbour they had to pass through the slave-market.
This was not the first time they had visited the scene of this
iniquitous traffic, but neither Harold nor Disco could accustom
themselves to it. Every time they entered the market their feelings of
indignation became so intense that it was with the utmost difficulty
they could control them. When Disco saw handsome negro men and
good-looking girls put up for public sale,--their mouths rudely opened,
and their teeth examined by cool, calculating Arabs, just as if they had
been domestic cattle--his spirit boiled within him, his fingers tingled,
and he felt a terrible inclination to make a wild attack, single-handed,
on the entire population of Zanzibar, tho