“If you traveled on a Greek passport you couldn’t use citizenship papers of any other country,” Fred objected.

“Who said I traveled on a Greek passport?  Do you take me for such a fool?  Who listens to a Greek consul?  He may protest, and accept fees, but Greece is a little country and no one listens to her consuls.  I carry a Greek passport in case I should find somewhere someday a Greek consul with influence or a Greek whom I wish to convince.  I traveled to South Africa as an American.  I went to Cape Town with the idea of going to Salisbury, and working my way up from there as a trader into the Congo.  I reached Johannesburg, and there I did a little I. D. B. and one thing and another until the Boer War came.  Then I fought for the Boers.  Yes, I have bled for the Boer cause.  It was a damned bad cause!  They robbed me of nearly all my money!  They left me to die when I was wounded!  It was only by the grace of God, and the intrigues of a woman that I made my way to Lourenco Marquez.  No, the war was not over, but what did I care?  I, Georges Coutlass, had had enough of it!  I recompensed myself en route.  I do not fight for a bunch of thieves for nothing!  I sailed from Lourenco Marquez to Mombasa.  I hunted elephant in British East Africa until they posted a reward for me on the telegraph poles.  The law says not more than two elephants in one year.  I shot two hundred!  I sold the ivory to an Indian, bought cattle, and went down into German East Africa.  The Masai attacked me, stole some of the cattle, and killed others.  The Germans, damn and blast them, took the rest!  They accused me of crimes—­me, Georges Coutlass!—­and imposed fines calculated carefully to skin me of all I had!  Roup and rotten livers! but I will knock them head-over-halleluja one fine day!  Not for nothing shall they flim-flam Georges Coutlass!  Which of you gentlemen is the lord?”

We bought him another drink, and watched it disappear with one uninterrupted gurgle down its appointed course.

“What did you do next?” Fred asked him before be had recovered breath enough to question us.  “I suppose the Germans had you at a loose end?”

“Do you think that?  Sacred history of hell!  It takes more than a lousy military German to get Georges Coutlass at a loose end!  They must get me dead before that can happen!  And then, by Blitzen, as those devils say, a dead Georges Coutlass will be better than a thousand dead Germans!  In hell I will use them to clean my boots on!  At a loose end, was I?  I met this bloody rogue Hassan—­the fat blackguard who told me you have come to Zanzibar for fish—­and made an agreement with him to look for Tippoo Tib’s buried ivory.  Yes, sir!  I showed him papers.  He thought they were money drafts.  He thought me a man of means whom he could bleed.  I had guns and ammunition, he none.  He pretended to know where some of Tippoo Tib’s ivory is buried.”

“Some of it, eh?” said Fred.