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Updated: May 22, 2025
"But you see, miss," observed Jack, "it will take us some time to build another boat, and it may be that we shall become good friends with these people before then. Timbo says that if we know how to manage them, we shall be able to get on very well, and maybe we shall do them a good turn, and they will help us." Our first canoe was now completed, and we lost no time in commencing a second.
We had now to cut off a piece of the trunk of sufficient length for the canoe. Jack wanted to make it thirty feet long; but Timbo advised that it should not be more than twenty feet, that it might be the more easily managed in the stream. As we had no saw, this had to be done with our axes, and, of course, occupied more than half as much time as getting down the trunk.
"It would be a hard matter, however, to find a pot big enough to boil it in, or to steam it afterwards, to make it mealy." The boys were continually asking Timbo and Igubo when they were going to catch them another pet. They were with me one day when the two men arrived loaded with the flesh of an animal which Stanley had shot. "What is that?" I asked.
Dey eggs of ostrich!" I looked into the nest, and saw that the eggs were arranged with their ends uppermost, to occupy, I concluded, as small a space as possible. "But, Timbo," I said, "do you think they are fresh, for otherwise I fear they would be of little use?" "Oh yes," he said; "de hen-ostrich only just laid dem. See! see! dere she is, too, watching us!"
Timbo supposed that the attack had been made by a tribe from the border of the lake, who had heard of the wealth possessed by the white men. It occurred to me that they had possibly come from the very village which our friends had advised us to avoid; and such I found was the ease. Had we fallen into their hands, our fate would have been sealed.
Timbo proposed that we should return to the camp and get our friends to come and carry off the tusks and flesh; but as I was anxious to get assistance for Natty as soon as possible, I begged Stanley to proceed, hoping that we might find the tusks on our way back.
I replied that I was very glad they had got home safely, and that I harboured no ill-will towards them. "I tell dem dat Christians ought to do good to deir enemies, so dey understand why you no beg de chief to kill dem," observed Timbo. At break of day we commenced our return journey. Our style of travelling was very different from what it had been during my former adventures.
Chickango assured Senhor Silva that he hoped to obtain a messenger to proceed to the south, although he himself would not venture to go alone. He took his meals with us; indeed he was, in many respects, a civilised black. He knew perfectly well how to behave at table; and used his knife and one of the wooden forks Jack and Timbo had manufactured with perfect ease.
"No, no, young gentlemen, time enough by-and-by," said Jack. "You come and help Timbo and I to finish off the other, and we will get on with it while the Captain and Mr Crawford take a cruise." "But, I say, we have not settled what they are to be called," exclaimed Leo, as we walked along. "I have been thinking about that," said Natty.
The other animals, terror-stricken, were trying to force their way out of the yard. I could see no one. What had become of Jack and Timbo I could not tell. They could not have deserted their posts, for both had given too many proofs of courage to make me suppose so.
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