The Germans, damn and blast them, took the rest! They accused me of crimes--me, Georges Coutlass!--and imposed fines calculated carefully to skin me of all I had! Roup and rotten livers! but I will knock them head-over-halleluja one fine day! Not for nothing shall they flim-flam Georges Coutlass! Which of you gentlemen is the lord ?" We bought him another drink, and watched it disappear with one uninterrupted gurgle down its appointed course.
"What did you do next ?" Fred asked him before he had recovered breath enough to question us.

"I suppose the Germans had you at a loose end ?" "Do you think that?
Sacred history of hell! It takes more than a lousy military German to get Georges Coutlass at a loose end! They must get me dead before that can happen! And then, by Blitzen, as those devils say, a dead Georges Coutlass will be better than a thousand dead Germans! In hell I will use them to clean my boots on! At a loose end, was I?
I met this bloody rogue Hassan--the fat blackguard who told me you have come to Zanzibar for fish--and made an agreement with him to look for Tippoo Tib's buried ivory.

Yes, sir! I showed him papers.

He thought they were money drafts.

He thought me a man of means whom he could bleed.