“And you say it was not by the stick, or hard work, or cholera, small-pox, fever, dysentery or climate?”
“Nothing of any of those things killed the Zanzibaris.”
“Were they shot, or hanged, poisoned, or drowned?”
“Neither was any of those things done unto them, and a proper and good man was never punished, and we had one day out of seven in the week to ourselves.”
“Now in the name of the Prophet Mohammed—throw your eyesight on these forty men here who sit apart. Look at those big eyes, hollow cheeks, thin necks, and every rib bare to the view. You see them? What has caused those men to be thus?”
“God knows!”
“Yet they are wasting away, man, and they will die.”
“Well, then, give me some idea—of what is killing them?”
“I cannot tell you, master; may be it is their fate to be thus.”