We all saw the absurdity, if nothing else, of the treatment meted out to us, based on no better grounds than our supposed possession of a secret.

Laughter brought good hope.

Hope gave us courage, and courage set Fred and Will hunting for a means of escape.

We decided there and then that to wait for this Major Schunck to come from the coast and pass judgment on us was a ridiculous waste of time as well as highly dangerous.
The first discovery Fred and Will made was that there were footholds cut in the great granite rock in which the Bismarck medallion was set.
They climbed it, and discovered that from the summit they could see all Muanza harbor from the shore line to the island in the distance.
Sitting up there, they presently spotted a native dhow drawn up with bow to the beach with the indefinable, yet unescapable air of rather long disuse.
Resisting the first temptation to hurry along the shore and examine it, they returned to camp to tell me of the find, and sent Simba, Kazimoto's understudy, to find out whose the dhow was and why it lay there.

They explained it was a fairly big dhow, and might be laid up there on account of leakiness.
But Simba came back grinning with the news that the dhow belonged to an Indian from British East who had been jailed for smuggling.