“I rather suspect it’s not so bad as that,” said Monty.  “You’re with friends in quarantine, Will!”

For a quarantine station in the tropics it was after all not such a bad place.  We could hear the crooning of lazy rollers on the beach, and what little sea-breeze moved at all came in to us through iron-barred windows.  The walls were of coral, three feet thick.  So was the roof.  The wet red-tiled floor made at least an impression of coolness, and the fresh green foliage of an enormous mango tree, while it obstructed most of the view, suggested anything but durance vile.  From not very far away the aromatic smell of a clove warehouse located us, not disagreeably, at the farther end of one of Sindbad’s journeys, and the birds in the mango branches cried and were colorful with hues and notes of merry extravagance.  Zanzibar is no parson’s paradise—­nor the center of much high society.  It reeks of unsavory history as well as of spices.  But it has its charms, and the Arabs love it.

It had Fred Oakes so interested that he had forgotten his concertina—­his one possession saved from shipwreck, for which he had offered to fight the whole of Zanzibar one-handed rather than have it burned.

("Damnation! it has silver reeds—­it’s an English top-hole one—­a wonder!”)

So the doctors who are kind men in the main disinfected it twice, once on the French liner that picked us out of the Bundesrath’s boat, and again in Zanzibar; and with the stench of lord-knew-what zealous chemical upon it he had let it lie unused while he picked up Kiswahili and talked by the hour to a toothless, wrinkled very black man with a touch of Arab in his breeding, and a deal of it in his brimstone vocabulary.

Presently Fred came over and joined us, dancing across the wide red floor with the skirts of his gown outspread like a ballet dancer’s—­ridiculous and perfectly aware of it.

“Monty, you’re rich!  We’re all made men!  We’re all rich!  Let’s spend money!  Let’s send for catalogues and order things!”

Monty declined to take fire.  It was I, latest to join the partnership and much the least affluent, who bit.

“If you love the Lord, explain!” said I.

“This old one-eyed lazaretto attendant is an ex-slave, ex-accomplice of Tippoo Tib!”

“And Tippoo Tib?” I asked.

“Ignorant fo’castle outcast!” (All that because I had made one voyage as foremast hand, and deserted rather than submit to more of it.) “Tippoo Tib is the Arab—­is, mind you, my son, not was—­the Arab who was made governor of half the Congo by H. M. Stanley and the rest of ’em.  Tippoo Tib is the expert who used to bring the slave caravans to Zanzibar—­bring ’em, send ’em, send for ’em—­he owned ’em anyway.  Tippoo Tib was the biggest ivory hunter and trader lived since old King Solomon!  Tippoo Tib is here—­in Zanzibar—­to all intents and purposes a prisoner on parole—­old as the hills—­getting ready to die—­and proud as the very ace of hell.  So says One-eye!”