"He is off to Cabul to lay his case before the Amir," observed the elderly Arab with grim humour. "Doubtless," agreed the Leading Gentleman, "he will swim the 2000 miles to India, and then up the Indus to Attock." And added, "But, bear witness all, if the young devil turn up again some day, that _I_ had no quarrel with him.... A pity! A pity!... Where shall we find his like, a Prank among the Franks, an Afghan among Afghans, a Frenchman in Algiers, a nomad robber in Persia, a Bey in Cairo, a Sahib in Bombay--equally at home as gentleman or tribesman? Where shall we find his like again as gatherer of the yellow honey of Berlin and as negotiator in Marseilles (where the discarded Gras breech-loaders of the army grow) and in Muscat? Woe! Woe!" "Or his like for impudence to his elders, harshness in a bargain, cunning and greed?" added the benevolent-looking Arab, who had gained a handsome sum by the murder. "For courage," corrected the Leading Gentleman, and with a heavy sigh, groaned. "We shall never see him more--and he was worth his weight to me annually in gold." "No, you won't see him again," agreed the Arab. "He'll hardly swim to Aden--apart from the little matter of sharks.... A pity the sharks should have so fair a body--and we starve!" and he turned a fatherly benevolent eye on Moussa Isa--whom a tall slender black Arab, from the hills about Port Sudan, of the true "fuzzy-wuzzy" type, had seized in his thin but Herculean arms as the boy rose to spring into the _toni_ and paddle to the rescue of his benefactor. The Dar-es-Salaam merchant threw Fuzzy Wuzzy a coil of cord and Moussa Isa (who struggled, kicked, bit and finding resistance hopeless, screamed, "Follow the boat, Master," as he lay on his back), was bound to a cracked and salt-encrusted beam or seat that supported, or was supported by, the cracked and salt-encrusted sides of the canoe-shaped vessel. Although very, very hungry, and perhaps as conscienceless and wicked a gang as ever assembled together on the earth or went down to the sea in ships, there was yet a certain reluctance on the part of some of the members to revert to cannibalism, although all agreed that it was necessary. Among the reluctant-to-commence were those who had no negro blood. Among the ready-to-commence, the full-blooded negroes were the most impatient. Although very hungry and rather weak they were in different case from that of European castaway sailors, in that all were inured to long periods of fasting, all had crossed the Sahara or the Sus, lived for days on a handful of dates, and had tightened the waist-string by way of a meal. Few of them ever thought of eating between sunrise and sunset. The lives of the negroes were alternations of gorging and starving, incredible repletion and more incredible fasting; devouring vast masses of hippopotamus-flesh to-day, and starving for a week thereafter; pounds of prime meat to-day, gnawing hunger and the weakness of semi-starvation for the next month.