tain fiercely.

Yoosoof did not smile at this; he even looked for a moment as if he were
going to resent it, but it was only for a moment. Self-interest came
opportunely to his aid, and made him submissive.

"What can we do?" he asked after a short silence. "You knows what the
Sultan say, other day, to one British officer, `If you stop slave-trade
you will ruin Zanzibar.' We mus' not do that. Zanzibar mus' not be
ruin."

"Why not?" demanded the captain, with a look of supreme contempt, "what
if Zanzibar _was_ ruined? Look here, now, Yoosoof, your dirty little
island--the whole island observe--is not quite the size of my own Scotch
county of Lanark. Its population is short of 250,000 all told--scarce
equal to the half of the population of Lanark--composed of
semi-barbarians and savages. That's one side of the question. Here's
the other side: Africa is one of the four quarters of the earth, with
millions of vigorous niggers and millions of acres of splendid land, and
no end of undeveloped resources, and you have the impudence to tell me
that an enormous lump of this land must be converted into a desert, and
something like 150,000 of its best natives be drawn off _annually_--for
what?--for what?" repeated the sailor, bringing his fist down on the
table before him with such force that the glasses danced on it and the
dust flew up; "for what? I say; for a paltry, pitiful island, ruled by
a sham sultan, without army or navy, and with little money, save what he
gets by slave-dealing; an island which has no influence for good on the
world, morally, religiously, or socially, and with little commercially,
though it has much influence for evil; an island which has helped the
Portuguese to lock up the east coast of Africa for centuries; an island
which would not be missed--save as a removed curse--if it were sunk this
night to the bottom of the sea, and all its selfish, sensual,
slave-dealing population swept entirely off the face of the earth."

The captain had risen and dashed his pipe to atoms on the floor in his
indignation as he made these observations. He now made an effort to
control himself, and then, sitting down, he continued--"Just think,
Yoosoof; you're a sharp man of business, as I know to my cost. You can
understand a thing in a commercial point of view. Just try to look at
it thus: On the one side of the world's account you have Zanzibar sunk
with all its Banyan and Arab population; we won't sink the n