Sparks told them it was a "disgusting
practice," and put back to his gunboat. I recalled the story to the
lieutenant, and he laughed mournfully.
"Yes," he said; "and what's worse is that we're here for two years
more, with all this fighting going on at the Cape and in China.
Still, we have our banjos, and the papers are only six weeks old,
and the steamer stops once every month."
[Illustration: Custom House, Zanzibar.]
Fortunately there were many bags of bees-wax to come over the side,
so we had time in which to give the exiles the news of the outside
world, and they told us of their present and past lives: of how one
as an American filibuster had furnished coal to the Chinese Navy;
how another had sold "ready to wear" clothes in a New York
department store, and another had been attache at Madrid, and
another in charge of the forward guns of a great battle-ship. We
exchanged addresses and agreed upon the restaurant where we would
meet two years hence to celebrate their freedom, and we emptied many
bottles of iced-beer, and the fact that it was iced seemed to affect
the exiles more than the fact that it was beer.
But at last the ship's whistle blew with raucous persistence. It was
final and heartless. It rang down the curtain on the mirage which
once a month comes to mock Chinde with memories of English villages,
of well-kept lawns melting into the Thames, of London asphalt and
flashing hansoms.
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