"Come back here, you fat rascal!" ordered Fred. "What do you mean
about buried ivory? What buried ivory?"

Hassan's face lost some of its transcendent cheek. Even the dyed beard
seemed to wilt.

"What you wanting?" he asked. "Hunt, trade, travel--what your
business?"

"Fish!" Fred answered genially.

"Samaki?"

"Yes--samaki--fish!"

Having no experience of Arabs, and part-Arabs, I wondered what on earth
Fred could be driving at. But Hassan wondered still more, and that was
the whole point. He stood agape, looking from one to the other of us,
his fat good-natured face an interrogation mark.

"I go an' tell bwana Tippoo Tib!" he announced, and departed swiftly.

"What's the idea of fish, Fred?" I asked.

"Oh, just curiosity. The way of getting information out of colored
folk is to get them so frantically curious they've no time to think up
lies. Tobacco would have done as well--anything unexpected. A bird
flying, and a black man lying,--are both of 'em easy to catch or
confuse unless they know which way they're heading. Let's go and look