Each of these alternatives had so much to recommend it and yet presented so many difficulties, that after long hours of discussion, for this talk was renewed again and again, I found it quite impossible to decide upon any one of them, especially as in the end Lord Ragnall always left the choice with its heavy responsibilities to me.
At length in despair I opened the window and whistled twice on a certain low note.

A minute later Hans shuffled in, shaking the wet off the new corduroy clothes which he had bought upon the strength of his return to affluence, for it was raining outside, and squatted himself down upon the floor at a little distance.

In the shadow of the table which cut off the light from the hanging lamp he looked, I remember, exactly like an enormous and antique toad.

I threw him a piece of tobacco which he thrust into his corn-cob pipe and lit with a match.
"The Baas called me," he said when it was drawing to his satisfaction, "what does Baas want of Hans ?" "Light in darkness!" I replied, playing on his native name, and proceeded to set out the whole case to him.
He listened without a word, then asked for a small glass of gin, which I gave him doubtfully.

Having swallowed this at a gulp as though it were water, he delivered himself briefly to this effect: "I think the Baas will do well not to go to Kilwa, since it means waiting for a ship, or hiring one; also there may be more slave-traders there by now who will bear him no love because of a lesson he taught them a while ago.