The Ivory Trail | Page 9

I getting you good cook. Where you want to go?"
"Are you looking for a job?" asked Fred.
"What you after? Ivory?"
"Maybe."
"I know all about ivory--I shoot, trade ivory along o' Tippoo Tib an' Stanley. You engage my services, all very well."
"Go and tell Tippoo Tib we want to see him. If he confirms what you say, perhaps we'll take you on," said Fred.
"Tell Tippoo Tib? Ha-ha! You want to find his buried ivory--that it? All white men wanting that! All right, I go tell him! I come again!"
"Come back here, you fat rascal!" ordered Fred. "What do you mean about buried ivory? What buried ivory?"
Hassan's face lost some of its transcendent cheek. Even the dyed beard seemed to wilt.
"What you wanting?" he asked. "Hunt, trade, travel--what your business?"
"Fish!" Fred answered genially.
"Samaki?"
"Yes--samaki--fish!"
Having no experience of Arabs, and part-Arabs, I wondered what on earth Fred could be driving at. But Hassan wondered still more, and that was the whole point. He stood agape, looking from one to the other of us, his fat good-natured face an interrogation mark.
"I go an' tell bwana Tippoo Tib!" he announced, and departed swiftly.
"What's the idea of fish, Fred?" I asked.
"Oh, just curiosity. The way of getting information out of colored folk is to get them so frantically curious they've no time to think up lies. Tobacco would have done as well--anything unexpected. A bird flying, and a black man lying,--are both of 'em easy to catch or confuse unless they know which way they're heading. Let's go and look at the bazaar."
But in order to look one had to reach. We left the great heavy-beamed hotel that had once been Tippoo Tib's residence, but were stopped in the outer doorway by a crowd of native boys, each with a brass plate on his arm.
"Guide, sah!--Guide, sah!--My name 'McPhairson, sah!--My name Jones, sah!--My name Johnson, sah! Guide to all the sights, sah!"
They were as persistent and evilly intentioned as a swarm of flies, and bold enough to strike back when anybody kicked them. While we wrestled and swore, but made no headway, we were accosted by a Greek, who seemed from long experience able to pass through them without striking or being struck. We were not left in doubt another second as to whether our friend Hassan had dallied on the way, and held his tongue or not.
"Good day, gentlemen! I hear you are after fish! Hah! That is a good story to tell to Arabs! You mean fishing for information, eh? Ha-hah!"
He turned on the swarm of boys, who still yelled and struggled about our legs.
"Imshi!* Voetsak!** Enenda zako!*** Kuma nina, wewe!**** In a minute he had them all scattering, for only innocence and inexperience attract the preying youth of Zanzibar. "Now, gentlemen, my name is Coutlass--Georges Coutlass. Have a drink with me, and let me tell you something."
----------------- * Imshi (Arabic), get to hell out of here! ** Voetsak (Cape Dutch), ditto. *** Enenda zako (Kiswahill), ditto. **** Kuma nina (Kiswahill). An opprobrious, and perhaps the commonest expletive In the language, amounting to a request for details of the objurgee's female ancestry. By no means for use in drawing-rooms. ------------------
He was tall, dark skinned, athletic, and roguish-looking even for the brand of Greek one meets with south of the Levant--dressed in khaki, with an American cowboy hat--his fingers nearly black with cigarette juice --his hands unusually horny for that climate--and his hair clipped so short that it showed the bumps of avarice and other things, said to reside below the hat-band to the rear. Yet a plausible, companionable-seeming man. And Zanzibar confers democratic privilege, as well as fevers; impartiality hovers in the atmosphere as well as smells, and we neither of us dreamed of hesitating, but followed him back into the bar--a wide, low-ceilinged room whose beams were two feet thick of blackened, polished hard wood. There we sat one each side of him in cane armchairs. He ordered the drinks, and paid for them.
"First I will tell you who I am," he said, when be had swallowed a foot-long whisky peg and wiped his lips with his coat sleeve. "I never boast. I don't need to! I am Georges Coutlass! I learned that you have an English lord among your party, and said I to myself 'Aha! There is a man who will appreciate me, who am a citizen of three lands!' Which of you gentlemen is the lord?"
"How can you be a citizen of three countries?" Fred countered.
"Of Greece, for I was born in Greece. I have fought Turks. Ah! I have bled for Greece. I have spilt my blood in many lands, but the best was for my motherland!--Of England, for I became naturalized. By bloody-hell-and-Waterloo, but I admire the English! They have guts, those English, and I am one of them! By