Some white man--we could not make head or tail of the name, but it sounded rather like Somebody belonging to a man named Carpets--had trapped him a few years before and put him to torture in the belief that he knew the secret.
"But me not knowing nothing!" he assured us solemnly, shaking his head again and again.
But he was not in the least squeamish about telling us that Tippoo Tib had surely buried huge quantities of ivory, and had caused to be slain afterward every one who shared the secret.
"How long ago ?" asked Monty.

But natives of that part of the earth are poor hands at reckoning time.
"Long time," he assured us.

He might have meant six years, or sixty.
It would have been all the same to him.
"No.

Me not liking Tippoo Tib.

One time his slave.