Will hacked off a lump of meat for them, and they forthwith forgot their troubles, as instantly as the birds forget when a sparrow-hawk has done murder down a hedge-row and swooped away.
Not everything was gone after all.

Kazimoto found the pots we had cooked the rice in, and started to boil the hippo's tongue for us.
"Come, Coutlass--sit down before we eat and tell us what happened," Fred suggested.
The Greek paced up and down another time or two, and at last calmed himself sufficiently to laugh at Fred's woman, who had squatted down patiently in the shadow behind him.
"Easy for you!" he grinned savagely, squatting on the far side of the fire.

"You have a woman! Mine is God knows where! She said to me--that hell-damned Lady Saffren Waldon said to me--we sat all three together in the stern of the dhow, I with my arm around Rebecca, and she said to me--" "I'll see if I can't make a dicker for the chief's canoes," Will interrupted.

"We can hear the Greek's tale any old time." "Trade my woman for them!" Fred suggested cheerfully.

"Go on, Coutlass!" The Greek gritted his teeth savagely.