The Ivory Trail. Talbot Mundy

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.

      "Even you're afraid of starting something!" He stared at both of us with an almost startled expression, as if he could not believe his own verdict, yet could not get away from it. "Else you'd give the Bundesrath story to the papers! That German skipper's conduct ought to be bruited round the world! You said you'd do it. You promised us! You told the man to his face you would!"

      "Now," said Monty, "you've touched on another national habit."

      "Which one?" Yerkes demanded.

      "Dislike of telling tales out of school. The man's dead. His ship's at the bottom. The tale's ended. What's the use? Besides—?"

      "Ah! You've another reason! Spill it!"

      "As a privy councilor, y'know, and all that sort of thing—?"

      "Same story! Afraid of starting something!"

      "The Germans—'specially their navy men—drink to what they call Der Tag y'know—the day when they shall dare try to tackle England. We all know that. They're planning war, twenty years from now perhaps, that shall give them all our colonies as well as India and Egypt. They're so keen on it they can't keep from bragging. Great Britain, on the other hand, hasn't the slightest intention of fighting if war can be avoided; so why do anything meanwhile to increase the tension? Why send broadcast a story that would only arouse international hatred? That's their method. Ours—I mean our government's—is to give hatred a chance to die down. If our papers got hold of the Bundesrath story they'd make a deuce of a noise, of course."

      "If your government's so sure Germany is planning war," objected Yerkes, "why on earth not force war, and feed them full of it before they're ready?"

      "Counsel of perfection," laughed Monty. "Government's responsible to the Common—Commons to the people—people want peace and plenty. No. Your guess was good. We are in here while the government at home squares the newspaper men."

      "You don't mean to tell me your British government controls the press?"

      "Hardly. Seeing 'em—putting it up to 'em straight—asking 'em politely. They're public-spirited, y'know. Hitting 'em with a club would be another thing. It's an easy-going nation, but kings have been sorry they tried force. Did you never hear of a king who used force against American colonies?"

      "Good God! So they keep you—an earl—a privy councilor—a retired colonel of regulars in good standing—under lock and key in this pest-house while they bribe the press not to tell the truth about some Germans and start trouble?"

      "Not exactly" said Monty.

      "But here you are!"

      "I preferred to remain with my party."

      "You moan they'd have let you out and kept us in?"

      "They'd have phrased it differently, but that's about what it would have amounted to. I have privileges."

      "Well, I'm jiggered!"

      "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!"

      "So we're all rich?" suggested Monty.

      "Of course we are! Listen! The British government took Tippoo's slaves away and busted his business. Made him come and live in this place, go to church on Sundays, and be good. Then they asked him what he'd done with his ivory. Asked him politely after putting him through that mill! One-eye here says Tippoo had a million tusks—a million!—safely buried! Government offered him ten per cent. of their cash value if he'd tell 'em where, and the old sport spat in their faces! Swears he'll die with the secret! One-eye vows Tippoo is the only one who knows. There were others, but Tippoo shot or poisoned 'em."

      "So we're rich," smiled Yerkes.

      "Of course we are! Consider this, America, and tell me if Standard Oil can beat it! One million tusks! I'm told—"

      "By whom?"

      "One-eye says—"

      "You'll say 'Oh!' at me to a different tune, before I've done! One-eye says it never paid to carry a tusk weighing less than sixty pounds. Some tusks weigh two hundred—some even more—took four men to carry some of 'em! Call it an average weight of one hundred pounds and be on the safe side."

      "Yes,