May he fall, as our lot was, on a gunsmith who has mended hammerlocks for Arabs, and who loves rifles as some greater rascals love a woman or a horse.
We all four strolled next morning, clad in the khaki reachmedowns that a Goanese "universal provider" told us were the "latest thing," into a den between a camel stable and an even mustier-smelling home of gloom, where oxen tied nose-to-tail went round and round, grinding out semsem everlastingly while a lean Swahili sang to them.

When he ceased, they stopped.

When he sang, they all began again.
In a bottle-shaped room at the end of a passage squeezed between those two centers of commerce sat the owner of the gun-store, part Arab, part Italian, part Englishman, apparently older than sin itself, toothless, except for one yellow fang that lay like an ornament over his lower lip, and able to smile more winningly than any siren of the sidewalk.
Evidently he shaved at intervals, for white stubble stood out a third of an inch all over his wrinkled face.

The upper part of his head was utterly bald, slippery, shiny, smooth, and adorned by an absurd, round Indian cap, too small, that would not stay in place and had to be hitched at intervals.
He said his name was Captain Thomas Cook, and the license to sell firearms framed on the mud-brick wall bore him witness.

(May he live forever under any name he chooses!) "Goons ?" he said.