CHAPTER THREE.
THE NJO HAPA SONG Tongues! Oh, music of eastern tongues, harmonied murmur of streets ahum! Trade! Oh, frasila weights of clove--ivory--copra--copal gum-- Rubber--vanilla and tortoise-shell! The methods change.
The captains come.
I was old when the clamor o' Babel's end (All seas were chartless then!) Drove forth the brood, and Solitude Was the newest quest of men.
I lay like a gem in a silken sea Unseen, uncoveted, unguessed Till scented winds that waft afar Bore word o' the warm delights there are Where ground-swells sing by Zanzibar Long rhapsodies of rest.
Wild, oh wilder than winter blasts my wet skies shriek when the winds are freed.
Mild, oh milder than virgin mirth is the laugh o' the reefs where sea-birds feed, Screaming and skirling and down again.

(Though the sea-birds warn do captains heed ?) There is no public landing wharf at Zanzibar.

Passengers have to submit their persons into the arms of loud-lunged Swahili longshoremen, who recognize one sole and only point of honor: neither passenger nor luggage shall be dropped into the surf.
Their invariable habit, the instant the view-halloa is raised, is to scamper headlong, pounce on the victim and pull him apart (or so it feels) until fortune, superior strength, or some such element decides the point; and then more often than not it is the victim's fate to be carried between two men, each hold of a thigh, each determined to get ashore or to the boat first, and each grimly resolved not to let go until three times the proper fee shall have been paid.

Of only these two things let the passenger assure himself--fight how he may, he will neither escape their clutches nor get wet.

Rather they will hold him upside-down until the contents of his pockets fall into the surf.