ard of coral beach,
cocoanut-fringed shore, clove orchard, or vanilla patch--not a lemon
tree nor a thousand-year-old baobab but could tell of battle and
intrigue; not a creek where the dhows lie peacefully today but could
whisper of cargoes run by night--black cargoes, groaning fretfully and
smelling of the 'tween-deck lawlessness.

"There are two things that have stuck in my memory that Lord Salisbury
used to say when I was an Eton boy, spending a holiday at Hatfield
House," said Monty. "One was, Never talk fight unless you mean fight;
then fight, don't talk. The other was, Always study the largest maps."

"Who's talking fight?" demanded Fred.

Monty ignored him. "Even this map isn't big enough to give a real idea
of distances, but it helps. You see, there's no railway beyond
Victoria Nyanza. Anything at all might happen in those great spaces
beyond Uganda. Borderlands are quarrel-grounds. I should say the
junction of British, Belgian, and German territory where Arab loot lies
buried is the last place to dally in unarmed. You fellows 'ud better
scour Zanzibar in the morning for the best guns to be had here."

So I went to bed at midnight with that added stuff for building dreams.
He who has bought guns remembers with a thrill; he who has not, has
in store for him the most delightful hours of life. May he fall, as
our lot was, on a gunsmith who has mended hammerlocks for Arabs, and
who loves rifles as some greater rascals love a woman or a horse.

We all four strolled next morning, clad in the khaki reachmedowns that
a Goanese "universal provider" told us were the "latest thing," into a
den between a camel stable and an even mustier-smelling home of gloom,
where oxen tied nose-to-tail went round and round, grinding out semsem
everlastingly while a lean Swahili sang to them. When he ceased, they
stopped. When he sang, they all began again.

In a bottle-shaped room at the end of a passage squeezed between those
two centers of commerce sat the owner of the gun-store, part Arab, part
Italian, part Englishman, apparently older than sin itself, toothless,
except for one yellow fang that lay like an ornament over his lower
lip, and able to smile more winningly than any siren of the sidewalk.
Evidently he shaved at intervals, for white stubble stood out a third
of an inch all over his wrinkled face. The upper part of his head was
utterly bald, slippery, shiny, smooth, and adorned by an absurd, round
Indian ca