Of all that's wild beneath the sun!"

"You fellows like that one? Anybody coming? Nobody for Will to fight
yet? Too bad! Well--we'll try a-gain! There's no chorus. It's all
poetic stuff, too gentle to be yowled by three such cannibals as you!
Listen!

"Old as the moonlit silences, to-night's loves are the
same
As when for ivory from far, and cloves and gems of
Zanzibar
King Solomon's men came.

"Sinful and still the same roofs lie that knew da Gama's
heel,
Those beams that light these sleepy waves looked on when
men threw murdered slaves
To make the sharks a meal.
And I think that beam on the silvered swell
That spreads, and splashes, and gleams, and dips,
That has shone on the cruel and brave as well,
On the trail o' the slaves and the ivory ships,
Is the lane down which the memories run
Of all that's wild beneath the sun."

The concertina wailed into a sort of minor dirge and ceased. Fred
fastened the catch, and put the instrument away.

"Why don't you applaud?" he asked.