To us—­even to Yerkes, familiar with United States merchant kings—­he seemed with his thirty thousand dollars a year already a gilded Croesus.  He had ample to travel on, and finance prospecting trips.  We never lacked for working capital, but the quest (and, including Yerkes, we were as keen as he) led us into strange places.

So behold him—­a privy councilor of England if you please—­lounging in the lazaretto of Zanzibar, clothed only in slippers, underwear and a long blue dressing-gown.  We three others were dressed the same, and because it smacked of official restraint we objected noisily; but Monty did not seem to mind much.  He was rather bored, but unresentful.

A French steamer had put us ashore in quarantine, with the grim word cholera against us, and although our tale of suffering and Monty’s rank, insured us a friendly reception, the port health authorities elected to be strict and we were given a nice long lazy time in which to cool our heels and order new clothes. (Guns, kit, tents, and all but what we stood in had gone to the bottom with the German cholera ship from whose life-boat the French had rescued us.)

“Keeping us all this time in this place, is sheer tyranny!” grumbled Yerkes.  “If any one wants my opinion, they’re afraid we’d talk if they let us out—­more afraid of offending Germans than they are of cholera!  Besides—­any fool could know by now we’re not sick!”

“There might be something in that,” admitted Monty.

“I’d send for the U. S. Consul and sing the song out loud, but for you!” Yerkes added.

Monty nodded sympathetically.

“Dashed good of you, Will, and all that sort of thing.”

“You English are so everlastingly afraid of seeming to start trouble, you’ll swallow anything rather than talk!”

“As a government, perhaps yes,” admitted Monty.  “As a people, I fancy not.  As a people we vary.”

“You vary in that respect as much as sardines in a can!  I traveled once all the way from London to Glasgow alone in one compartment with an Englishman.  Talk?  My, we were garrulous!  I offered him a newspaper, cigarettes, matches, remarks on the weather suited to his brand of intelligence—­(that’s your sole national topic of talk between strangers!)—­and all he ever said to me was ‘Haw-ah!’ I’ll bet he was afraid of seeming to start trouble!”

“He didn’t start any, did he?” asked Monty.

“Pretty nearly he did!  I all but bashed him over the bean with the newspaper the third time he said ‘haw-ah!’”

Monty laughed.  Fred Oakes was busy across the room with his most amazing gift of tongues, splicing together half-a-dozen of them in order to talk with the old lazaretto attendant, so he heard nothing; otherwise there would have been argument.

“Then it would have been you, not he who started trouble,"’ said I, and Yerkes threw both hands up in a gesture of despair.