everlastingly while a lean Swahili sang to them. When he ceased, they
stopped. When he sang, they all began again.

In a bottle-shaped room at the end of a passage squeezed between those
two centers of commerce sat the owner of the gun-store, part Arab, part
Italian, part Englishman, apparently older than sin itself, toothless,
except for one yellow fang that lay like an ornament over his lower
lip, and able to smile more winningly than any siren of the sidewalk.
Evidently he shaved at intervals, for white stubble stood out a third
of an inch all over his wrinkled face. The upper part of his head was
utterly bald, slippery, shiny, smooth, and adorned by an absurd, round
Indian cap, too small, that would not stay in place and had to be
hitched at intervals.

He said his name was Captain Thomas Cook, and the license to sell
firearms framed on the mud-brick wall bore him witness. (May he live
forever under any name he chooses!)

"Goons?" he said. "Goons? You gentlemen want goons? I have the goon
what settled the hash of Sayed bin Mohammed--here it be. This other
one's the rifle--see the nicks on her butt!--that Kamarajes the Greek
used. See 'em--Arab goons--slaver goons--smooth-bore elephant
goons--fours, eights, twelves--Martinis--them's the lot that was
reekin' red-hot, days on end, in the last Arab war on the Congo,
considerable used up but goin' cheap;--then here's Mausers (he
pronounced it "Morsers")-- old-style, same as used in 1870--good goons
they be, long o' barrel and strong, but too high trajectory for some
folks;--some's new style, magazines an' all--fine till a grain o' sand
jams 'em oop;--an' Lee-Enfields, souvenirs o' the Boer War, some o'
them bought from folks what plundered a battle-field or two--mostly all