"The noble English lord has beaten me," he gasped.
"Apologise!" yelled Stephen, picking up a handful of mud, "or I shove
this down your dirty throat."
He seemed to understand. At any rate, he bowed till his forehead
touched the ground, and apologised very thoroughly.
"Now that is over," I said cheerfully to him, "so how about those
bearers?"
"I have no bearers," he answered.
"You dirty liar," I exclaimed; "one of my people has been down to your
village there and says it is full of men."
"Then go and take them for yourself," he replied, viciously, for he
knew that the place was stockaded.
Now I was in a fix. It was all very well to give a slave-dealer the
thrashing he deserved, but if he chose to attack us with his Arabs we
should be in a poor way. Watching me with the eye that was not bunged
up, Hassan guessed my perplexity.
"I have been beaten like a dog," he said, his rage returning to him
with his breath, "but God is compassionate and just, He will avenge in
due time."
The words had not left his lips for one second when from somewhere out
at sea there floated the sullen boom of a great gun.
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