chili in his arrack, to "make it bite." Guled uncovered his head, a member
which in Africa is certainly made to go bare, and buttered himself with an
unguent redolent of sheep's tail; and Ismail, the rais or captain of our
"foyst," [6] the Sahalah, applied himself to puffing his nicotiana out of
a goat's shank-bone. Our crew, consisting of seventy-one men and boys,
prepared, as evening fell, a mess of Jowari grain [7] and grease, the
recipe of which I spare you, and it was despatched in a style that would
have done credit to Kafirs as regards gobbling, bolting, smearing lips,
licking fingers, and using ankles as napkins. Then with a light easterly
breeze and the ominous cliffs of Little Aden still in sight, we spread our
mats on deck and prepared to sleep under the moon. [8]

My companions, however, felt, without perhaps comprehending, the joviality
arising from a return to Nature. Every man was forthwith nicknamed, and
pitiless was the raillery upon the venerable subjects of long and short,
fat and thin. One sang a war-song, another a love-song, a third some song
of the sea, whilst the fourth, an Eesa youth, with the villanous
expression of face common to his tribe, gave us a rain measure, such as
men chaunt during wet weather. All these effusions were _naive_ and
amusing: none, however, could bear English translation without an amount
of omission which would change their nature. Each effort of minstrelsy was
accompanied by roars of laughter, and led to much manual pleasantry. All
swore that they had never spent, intellectually speaking, a more charming
_soiree_, and pitied me for being unable to enter thoroughly into the
spirit of the dialogue. Truly it is not only the polished European, as was
said of a certain travelling notability, that lapses with facility into
pristine barbarism.

I will now introduce you to my companions. The managing man is one
Mohammed Mahmud [9], generally called El Hammal or the porter: he is a