To the care of this missionary Lieutenant Lindsay committed Azinté, telling him as much of her sad story as he was acquainted with. The missionary willingly took charge of her, and placed her as a nurse in the temporary hospital which he had instituted for the little ones above referred to. Here Azinté proved herself to be a most tender, affectionate, and intelligent nurse to the poor children, for whom she appeared to entertain particular regard, and here, on the departure of the ‘Firefly’ shortly afterwards, Lindsay left her in a state of comfort, usefulness, and comparative felicity.
Chapter Eighteen.
Describes Some of the Doings of Yoosoof and His Men in Procuring Black Ivory from the Interior of Africa.
A dirty shop, in a filthy street in the unhealthy town of Zanzibar, is the point to which we now beg leave to conduct our reader—whom we also request to leap, in a free and easy way, over a few months of time!
It is not for the sake of the shop that we make this leap, but for the purpose of introducing the two men who, at the time we write of, sat over their grog in a small back-room connected with that shop. Still the shop itself is not altogether unworthy of notice. It is what the Americans call a store—a place where you can purchase almost every article that the wants of man have called into being. The prevailing smells are of oil, sugar, tea, molasses, paint, and tar, a compound which confuses the discriminating powers of the nose, and, on the principle that extremes meet, removes the feeling of surprise that ought to be aroused by discovering that these odours are in close connexion with haberdashery and hardware. There are enormous casks, puncheons, and kegs on the floor; bales on the shelves; indescribable confusion in the corners; preserved meat tins piled to the ceiling; with dust and dirt encrusting everything. The walls, beams, and rafters, appear to be held together by means of innumerable cobwebs. Hosts of flies fatten on, without diminishing, the stock, and squadrons of cockroaches career over the earthen floor.
In the little back-room of this shop sat the slave-dealer Yoosoof, in company with the captain of an English ship which lay in the harbour.
Smoke from the captain’s pipe filled the little den to such an extent that Yoosoof and his friend were not so clearly distinguishable as might have been desired.
“You’re all a set of false-hearted, wrong-headed, low-minded, scoundrels,” said the plain-spoken captain, accompanying each asseveration with a puff so violent as to suggest the idea that his remarks were round-shot and his mouth a cannon.