to the potsherd. "If it got out, and anything happened to me, my next of
kin would dispute my will on the ground of insanity, and I should become
the laughing stock of Cambridge."

That day three months we were on the ocean, bound for Zanzibar.



IV

THE SQUALL

How different is the scene that I have now to tell from that which has
just been told! Gone are the quiet college rooms, gone the wind-swayed
English elms, the cawing rooks, and the familiar volumes on the shelves,
and in their place there rises a vision of the great calm ocean gleaming
in shaded silver lights beneath the beams of the full African moon. A
gentle breeze fills the huge sail of our dhow, and draws us through
the water that ripples musically against her sides. Most of the men are
sleeping forward, for it is near midnight, but a stout swarthy Arab,
Mahomed by name, stands at the tiller, lazily steering by the stars.
Three miles or more to our starboard is a low dim line. It is the
Eastern shore of Central Africa. We are running to the southward, before
the North East Monsoon, between the mainland and the reef that for
hundreds of miles fringes this perilous coast. The night is quiet, so
quiet that a whisper can be heard fore and aft the dhow; so quiet that a
faint booming sound rolls across the water to us from the distant land.

The Arab at the tiller holds up his hand, and says one word:--"_Simba_
(lion)!"