d their
willingness to pay even more than the stipulated price--its weight in
silver _per_ rifle. But food is made for men as well as slaves, and if
you, in your noble trustfulness, resolutely decline to reduce your daily
rations, there must, with mathematical certitude of date, arrive the
final period to any given and limited supply. Though banking wholly with
Heaven in the matter of their own salvation from hunger, the Argonauts
displayed mere worldly wisdom in the case of Moussa Isa and gave him the
minimum of food that might be calculated to keep within him strength
adequate to his duties of steering, swarming up the mast, baling,
cooking, massaging the liver of the Leading Gentleman, and so forth. And
in due course, the calm continuing, these pious and religious voyagers
came to the bitter end of their water, their rice, their _dhurra_, their
dates--and all (except the salt and coffee which formed part of the
ostensible, bogus cargo) that they had, as they too-slowly drifted into
the track of those vessels that enter and leave the strait of
Bab-el-Mandeb, the Gate of Tears, the tears of the starving, drowning,
ship-wrecked and castaway.

Salt _per se_ is a poor diet, and, for the making of potable coffee,
fresh water is very necessary.

Some of the Argonauts were, as has been said, Negro gentlemen. On the
third day of absolute starvation, one had an Idea and made a suggestion.

The Leading Gentleman entertained it with an open mind and without
enthusiasm.

The Tanga tout acclaimed it as a divine inspiration.

The one-eyed Moor literally smiled upon it. As his eye was single and
his body therefore full of light, he saw the beauty of the notion at
once. Had it been full of food instead, we may charitably suppose he
would not have remarked:--

"A pity we did not feed him up better".

For the suggestion concerned Moussa Isa and food--Moussa Isa as food,
in point of fact. The venerable gentle-looking Arab, whose face beamed
effulgent with benevolence and virtue, murmured:--

"He will have but little blood, the dog. None of it must
be--er--_wasted_ by the--ah--butcher."

The huge man with the neat geometrical pattern of little scars,
perpendicular on the forehead, horizontal on the cheeks and in
concentric circles on the chest (done with loving care and a knife, in
his infancy, by his papa) said only "_Ptwack_" as he chewed a mouthful
of coffee-beans and hide. It may have been a pious ejaculation or a
whole s