Duri Jail, since he
belonged to Aden, had been convicted there, and only sent to the Duri
Reformatory because Aden boasted no such institution....

Yes. The Brahmin's corpse should be the stepping-stone to higher things
and the place where people knew a Somali from a Negro.

If only he were in the carpentry department with Master Brahmin, where
there were axes, hammers, chisels, knives, saws, and various pointed
instruments. Fancy teaching the young gentleman manners and ethnology
with an axe! However, after one or two more journeys between the tap and
the flower-bed, he would pass within striking-distance of the dog as he
worked his slow way along the tract of earth he was supposed to be
digging up with the silly short-handled pick.

Should he try and seize the pick and give him one on the temple with it?
No, the Brahmin would scream and struggle and the overseer would be on
Moussa Isa in a single bound. He must strike a sudden blow in the act of
passing.

A few more journeys to the water-tap....

_Now!_ "_Hubshi_," eh?

Halting beside the crouching Brahmin youth, Moussa Isa swung up the
heavy watering-can by the spout and aimed a blow with all his strength
at the side of his enemy's head. He designed to bring the sharp strong
rim of the base behind the ear with the first blow, on the temple with
the second, and just anywhere thereafter, if time permitted of a
thereafter.

But the aggravating creature tossed his head as Moussa, with a grunt of
energy, brought the vessel down, and the rim merely struck the top of
the shaven skull. Another--harder. Another--with frenzied strength and
the force of long-suppressed rage and sense of wrong.

And then Moussa was knocked head over heels and sat upon by the overseer
in charge of the garden-gang, while the Brahmin twitched convulsively on
the ground. He was by no means dead, however, and the sole immediate
results, to Moussa, were penal diet, solitary confinement in his
palatial cell, a severe sentence of corn-grinding with the heavy quern,
and most joyous recollections of the sound of the water-can on the pate
of the foe.

"I have still to kill you, of course," he whispered to his victim, the
next time they met, and the Brahmin went in terror of his life. He was
a very clever young person and had passed an astounding number of
examinations in the course of his brief career. But he was not
courageous, and his "education" had given him skill in nothing
practical, exce