"Don't be an idiot."
Dick turned to the black squatting beside them. "What's your name?" he asked.
"Bulala," replied the black, and then he explained that he had been a cook, or safari, for a white man who was hunting big game; but that something had gone wrong and he had run away to go back to his home, and had been captured by these people whom he described as the Bagalla tribe.
"Do you speak the same language as these Bagalla?" demanded Doc.
"We understand each other," replied Bulala. "Will you teach us your language?"
Bulala was greatly pleased with the idea, and set out at once upon the role of tutor and never in the world had a tutor such eager pupils, and never had Dick and Doc applied themselves so diligently to the acquisition of useful knowledge.
"Say," said Doc, "this language is a cinch."
"If you learn it as well as you did French," said Dick, "you ought to be able to understand yourself in about a hundred years, even if nobody else can understand you."
"Is that so?" demanded Doc. "Well, you're not so good, yourself."
As the boys' eyes had become more and more accustomed to the dim light of the interior of the hut they had discovered the scant furnishings, the filth, and their fellow prisoners.