“What Simba says is truth,” replied Moto. “The Warori are bad, bad, bad, and the Watuta are worse—very bad—and I think we shall have very serious times of it.”
“How serious?” asked Selim again.
“I mean that we are very likely to have war with them. Ever since Abdullah bin Nasib or Kisesa had that battle with Mostana, the Warori have been wicked. They have Arab slaves now. They formerly used to kill their prisoners or torture them, but now they treat them in the same way that the Arabs treat the Warori chiefs—they make slaves of them.”
“Make slaves of Arabs!” shouted young Khamis, a sinewy youth of sixteen, and brave as the bravest of men. “You lie, cur dog; you lie, slave!” he added furiously.
“Ah, Master Khamis,” said Moto, deprecatingly, “if they are slaves, it was not I who made them slaves; but I speak the truth.”
“A Bedaween!—a free Bedaween, who owns no master—a slave! Moto, you are a liar; it is impossible. A Bedaween cannot live in slavery.”
“But there are slaves with the Warori, and some are Arabs. I swear it,” he added solemnly.
“Then for my part,” said young Khamis, “I am glad that my father has taken this road. The torments of Eblis light on the unbelieving dogs! An Arab a slave! Then let every Mrori look to himself should he fall into my power, for, by Mohammed’s holy name, I will torture the reptile to death.”
“Hold, young master,” said the deep-voiced Simba, halting a moment in his work, and raising himself to his fullest height, which, as the firelight danced on his gigantic form, seemed to add vastness to that which was vast already. “Listen to me, Khamis, young son of Khamis bin Abdullah; the Warori are bad, as you heard Moto say, but the Warori are men, and I have heard a good Nazarene, one of the white men at Zanzibar, say that all men are equal. If the Warori are men, and are lords of their own soil, and if Arabs trouble them, or will not do them justice, what great wrong are the Warori guilty of if they fight; and if they catch Arabs prisoners in war, why should they not treat them as the Arabs would treat the Warori? Answer me that.”
“Why, Simba,” asked the eldest of the sons of Mussoud, “do you know what the sacred Küran says? I remember what the good Imam has told me often: ‘Verily the fruit of the trees of Al Zakkum shall be the food of the unbelievers, as the dregs of oil shall it boil in the bellies of the damned, like the boiling of the hottest water. When ye encounter the unbelievers strike off their heads until ye have made a great slaughter among them, and bind them in bonds, and either give them a free dismission afterwards or exact a ransom, until the war shall have laid down its arms.’ And in another place the Küran says, according to the holy and learned Imam, ‘And as to those who fight in defence of God’s true religion, God will not suffer their works to perish; he will guide them, and will dispose their heart aright; and he will lead them into paradise, of which he hath told them.’”