“You fellows like that one?  Anybody coming?  Nobody for Will to fight yet?  Too bad!  Well—­we’ll try a-gain!  There’s no chorus.  It’s all poetic stuff, too gentle to be yowled by three such cannibals as you!  Listen!

        “Old as the moonlit silences, to-night’s loves are the
same
        As when for ivory from far, and cloves and gems of
Zanzibar
        King Solomon’s men came.

        “Sinful and still the same roofs lie that knew da Gama’s
        heel,
        Those beams that light these sleepy waves looked on when
men threw murdered slaves
        To make the sharks a meal. 
        And I think that beam on the silvered swell
        That spreads, and splashes, and gleams, and dips,
        That has shone on the cruel and brave as well,
        On the trail o’ the slaves and the ivory ships,
        Is the lane down which the memories run
        Of all that’s wild beneath the sun.”

The concertina wailed into a sort of minor dirge and ceased.  Fred fastened the catch, and put the instrument away.

“Why don’t you applaud?” he asked.

“Oh, bravo, bravo!” said Will and I together.

Monty looked hard at both of us.

“Strange!” he remarked.  “You’re both distracted, and you’ve each got a slight cut over the jugular!”

“Been trying out razors,” said Yerkes.

“Um-m-m!” remarked Monty.  “Well—­I’m glad it’s no worse.  How about bed, eh?  Better lock your door—­that lady up-stairs is what the Germans call gefaehrlich!* Goo’night!”

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* Gefaehrlich, dangerous.
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CHAPTER THREE

THE NJO HAPA SONG

Tongues!  Oh, music of eastern tongues, harmonied murmur
        of streets ahum! 
Trade!  Oh, frasila weights of clove—­ivory—­copra—­copal
        gum—­
Rubber—­vanilla and tortoise-shell!  The methods change. 
        The captains come.

        I was old when the clamor o’ Babel’s end
        (All seas were chartless then!)
        Drove forth the brood, and Solitude
        Was the newest quest of men. 
        I lay like a gem in a silken sea
        Unseen, uncoveted, unguessed
        Till scented winds that waft afar
        Bore word o’ the warm delights there are
        Where ground-swells sing by Zanzibar
        Long rhapsodies of rest.

Wild, oh wilder than winter blasts my wet skies shriek when
        the winds are freed. 
Mild, oh milder than virgin mirth is the laugh o’ the reefs
        where sea-birds feed,
Screaming and skirling and down again. (Though the sea
        -birds warn do captains heed?)

There is no public landing wharf at Zanzibar.  Passengers have to submit their persons into the arms of loud-lunged Swahili longshoremen, who recognize one sole and only point of honor:  neither passenger nor luggage shall be dropped into the surf.