submit on your own behalf. You can have your guns against a cash
deposit--"

"How big?"

"Two hundred rupees for each gun!'

Fred laughed. The demand was intended to be away over our heads. The
collector bridled.

"But no ammunition," he went on, "until your claim to respectability
has been confirmed. By the way, the only claim you've made to me is
for the guns. You've told me nothing about yourselves."

"Two hundred a gun?" said Fred. "Counting a pistol or revolver as
one?" Three guns apiece--nine guns--eighteen hundred rupees' deposit?"

The collector nodded with a sort of grim pleasure in his own
unreasonableness. Fred drew out our new check book.

"You fellows agreeable?" he asked, and we nodded.

"Here's a check on the Mombasa Bank for ten thousand, and your
government can have as much more again if it wants it," he said. "Make
me out a receipt please, and write on it what it's for."

The collector wrote. He was confused, for he had to tear up more than
one blank.

"I suppose we get interest on the money at the legal local rate?" asked