Along bare seas from reef to beach
Until from port and river reach
The fever'd captains go.

Red, oh redder than red lips are, my flowers nod in the blazing
noon,
Blue, oh bluer than maidens' eyes, are the breasts o' my waves
in the young monsoon,
And there are cloves to smell, and musk, and lemon trees, and
cinnamon.

---------
*The words "Njo hapa" in the Kiswahili tongue are the equivalent of
"come hither!"
---------


Estimates of ease and affluence vary with the point of view. While his
older brother lived, Monty had continued in his element, a cavalry
officer, his combined income and pay ample for all that the Bombay side
of India might require of an English gentleman. They say that a finer
polo player, a steadier shot on foot at a tiger, or a bolder squadron
leader never lived.

But to Monty's infinite disgust his brother died childless. It is
divulging no secret that the income that passed with the title varied
between five and seven thousand pounds a year, according as coal was
high, and tenants prosperous or not--a mere miserable pittance, of
course, for the Earl of Montdidier and Kirkudbrightshire; so that all
his ventures, and therefore ours, had one avowed end--shekels enough to