away—and I suddenly recalled the story of the little gun-boat with its negro crew that stood up to the great British cruiser and banged away with its toy guns until it was sent to the bottom with every man on board, and all at once I felt very sorry for this youth, whose fathers held sway over a dominion as large as all that part of the United States lying west of the Rocky Mountains, but which, thanks to the insatiable land hunger of the European nations, has dwindled to a territory scarcely larger than Rhode Island. That in the not far-distant future Zanzibar will again play a part in the drama of international politics there is but little doubt. The island's position adjacent to the mainland, from which it is separated by a channel less than thirty miles wide, combined with the advantages of its deep and roomy harbour, mark it naturally as the chief entrepôt of all East Africa, and the gate through which the interior of the continent is destined to be opened up to European settlement and exploitation. Being almost equidistant—some two thousand four hundred miles—from India, the Cape, and the Canal, and controlling the lines of cable communication with Madagascar and Mauritius, it affords a strategic position of immense importance as a naval base in the contingency of closing the Suez Canal in time of war. Germany has long had a greedy eye on Zanzibar, for the nation that holds it controls, both strategically and commercially, Germany's East African possessions and their capital of Dar-es-Salam. That England would be willing to turn Zanzibar over to Germany in return for the cession of a strip of territory through German East Africa which would permit the completion of her long-dreamed-of, and at present indefinitely interrupted, Cape-to-Cairo trunk line, there is every reason to believe. So I trust that the little brown man in the white-and-gold uniform will enjoy playing at sovereignty while he may, for if that day ever comes to pass when the red banner on his palace flagstaff is replaced with the standard of Germany, there will pass into the pleasant oblivion of the Paris boulevards the last of a long line of one-time powerful, oftentimes piratical, but always picturesque rulers, the Sultans of Zanzibar. CHAPTER VII THE SPIKED HELMET IN AFRICA