It is strange enough to find in this tiny village on the edge of the world, men from Darfur and the sources of the Nile, but we have even a Swahili from Zanzibar. Old Mabrûk’s life has been far from that of the “Blessed One” his name signifies. He was kidnapped when a boy of ten or twelve, in the days of old Sultan Bargash, away from the island of plenty, to spend the rest of his days on desert coasts. The old ruse, of offering him some coppers to carry a parcel aboard a _sambûk_, started him on the journey from which he never returned. He found himself with “two hundred” others beating up desert coasts for “seven months[14],” through the Gate of Tears into the Red Sea, to Hodêda, and thence to Jedda. There they were thrust into a tiny house by the sea (here Mabrûk indicated my bookshelf as approximately the size of the house!) and sold a few at a time at night. _Plate VIII_ [Illustration: Fig. 14. Old Mabrûk, from Zanzibar] [Illustration: Fig. 15. Hamitic woman Two cotton shawls form her complete dress] After a year in Jedda he was sent in a _sambûk_ loaded with camels to Suakin, where he obtained his liberty, he scarcely knows how. He was employed aboard a _sambûk_ used by Government to convey money and stores to its _employés_ at the three coast villages, and in the course of time his son was with him as his fellow-sailor. One night, while in fancied security in a desert harbour, they were set upon by “forty” Arabians, who took them, the Government money, stores, and all, to Jedda. Here he was a slave again, working at collecting fodder in a state of semi-starvation. Two others of the crew had escaped in the night; the rest, including his son, were taken inland and he never saw them again. His skipper, being a freeman, a Hamite not a negro, was not enslaved, but was an exile, until an acquaintance from this side found him and took him home to Suakin. The portrait of this veteran is shewn on Plate X. After three months came his great adventure, his crossing the whole Red Sea in a stolen canoe, a mere dug-out about fifteen feet long by a little over two broad. This feat is part of one of the stories of Saint Flea (page 37) and seemed legendary until Mabrûk appeared, a man who had done it in actual life, and whose canoe is in sight from my window.