162 
MADAGASCAR. 
of his name will often blanch the cheek of the 
most stolid son of Ishmael, who may have had to 
face the bayonets of an English company or 
the cannon of a British fleet, and has done so 
unmoved. Fearless, and without dread in the 
face of human foes, they are powerless and un¬ 
hinged in an instant at the whisper of the one 
dreaded name, and when upon the water they 
seem to have a special dread of his power. In 
the lowering cloud, or the rustle of the rising 
storm—in the sudden leap of the sea-dolphin at 
the bows, or in the scream of the night birds, 
they appear ever to hear the motion of his wings ; 
and in the presence of death their cries and 
utterances of despairing horror are heartrending 
in the extreme. The Mohammedan creed con¬ 
tains much that is only a species of veiled fatal¬ 
ism, and the Arab is constantly endeavouring 
through life to cheat his destiny. 
I had a considerable knowledge of many of 
these men, old slave-traders, and former com¬ 
manders of dhows which had been swept from 
the Mozambique waters by the activity of the 
British cruisers. Having eluded the vigilance 
of the English blockade, these people had settled 
down in Madagascar as planters or traders, and 
occasionally it was possible to get from them 
some account of their former nefarious and often 
murderous exploits, when engaged in the slave- 
