r craft by
the Arab chiefs of Lamoi and Mozambique, are fine craft, and carry six
and twelve brass guns sometimes, like the old carronades of the
service."

"They sail well, you say?" I inquired.

"Don't they, that's all! Why, none of our quickest steam-pinnaces can
overhaul them when they're going on a wind, for even with the lightest
breeze their sails, being made of twilled calico and light, waft them
along as if by magic. There are twenty that escape us for every one we
catch, as, in the busy season, the caravans from the interior bring the
slaves down to the coast wholesale. The Portuguese and Arabs are the
chaps that manage the business; and once the slaves are aboard the
dhows, they sneak along the land until night-time, when, if the wind
blows fair for them, they're off and away to Pemba, or further up
towards the Arabian coast, where our boats can whistle for them for all
the chance they have of overhauling them!"

"What becomes of the slaves that are liberated when the dhows are
captured?" said I.

"Oh, the boys are sent to the Boy's Mission Schools at Zanzibar, and the
girls to the Female Mission there also; while the men folk, at least all
the able-bodied and strong ones that are not too old, are enlisted into
the sultan's army--the Sultan of Zanzibar, I mean, the Seyyid Burgash
that was. When I was there, the commander of his army was a lieutenant
of our navy who had been `lent' by government for the purpose for three
years, and now he has left the service altogether and is known as
`General Matthews' on the east coast. A right smart chap he is too, for
he drilled the niggers as well as if he were a born sojer instead of a
sailor!"

"Do the slaves like this business?" I asked, thinking that their
"freedom" seemed rather questionable; and then, too, consider the cost
both in men and money it is to England every year.

"Well, I don't believe they do," answered the ex-man-o'-war's-man--"I've
heard some of them say that they were quite contented to work on the
clove plantations, and preferred that to loafing about the streets of
Zanzibar, where hundreds of them are to be seen every day, with nothing
to do and very little to eat, unless they take to thieving!"

"What sort of a place is Zanzibar?" said I now.

"Well, sir," replied the pensioner, "like all them oriental towns I have
ever seen in the Levant and elsewhere, it looks ever so much better as
seen from the sea than it does at close quart