the cruel and brave as well,
On the trail o' the slaves and the ivory ships,
Is the lane down which the memories run
Of all that's wild beneath the sun."

The concertina wailed into a sort of minor dirge and ceased. Fred
fastened the catch, and put the instrument away.

"Why don't you applaud?" he asked.

"Oh, bravo, bravo!" said Will and I together.

Monty looked hard at both of us.

"Strange!" he remarked. "You're both distracted, and you've each got a
slight cut over the jugular!"

"Been trying out razors," said Yerkes.

"Um-m-m!" remarked Monty. "Well--I'm glad it's no worse. How about
bed, eh? Better lock your door--that lady up-stairs is what the
Germans call gefaehrlich!* Goo'night!"

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* Gefaehrlich, dangerous.
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CHAPTER THREE

THE NJO HAPA SONG

Tongues! Oh, music of eastern tongues, harmonied murmur
of streets ahum!
Trade! Oh, frasila weights of clove--ivory--copra--copal
gum--
Rubber--vanilla and tortoise-shell! The methods change.
The captains come.

I was old when the clamor o' Babel's end
(All seas were chartless then!)
Drove forth the brood, and Solitude
Was the newest quest of men.
I lay like a gem in a silken sea
Unseen, uncoveted, unguessed
Till scented winds that waft afar
Bore word o' the warm delights there are
Where ground-swells sing by Zanzibar
Long rhapsodies of rest.

Wild, oh wilder than winter blasts my wet skies shriek when
the winds are freed.
Mild, oh milder than virgin mirth is the laugh o' the reefs
where sea-birds feed,
Screaming and skirling and down again. (Though the sea-birds
warn do captains heed?)

There is no public landing wharf at Zanzibar. Passengers have to
submit their persons into the arms of loud-lunged Swahili longshoremen,
who recognize one sole and only point of honor: neither passenger nor
luggage shall be dropped into the surf.

Their invariable habit, the instant the view-halloa is raised, is to
scamper headlong, pounce on the victim and pull him apart (or so it
feels) until fortune, superior strength, or some such element decides
the point; and then more often than not it is the victim's fate to be
carried between two men, each hold of a thigh, each determined to get
ashore or to the boat first, and each grimly resolved not to let go