The boys talked until three o'clock the next morning.
The disappointment that followed later when it was learned that Dick's father, who was an army officer, could not get leave of absence and Dick's mother would not go without him; the letters and cablegrams that were exchanged between England and America, and England and Africa; the frantic appeals of the boys to their parents are interesting only in the result they effected; which was that the boys were to go by themselves, Tarzan of the Apes having promised to meet them at the end of the railway with fifty of his own Waziri warriors, thus assuring their safe passage through savage Africa to the far-away home of the ape-man. And this brings us to the beginning of our story.
CHAPTER ONE
A train wound slowly through mountains whose rugged slopes were green with verdure and out across a rolling, grassy veldt, tree dotted. From a carriage window, two boys, eager-eyed, excited, kept constant vigil. If there was anything to be seen they were determined not to miss it, and they knew that there should be many things to see.
"I'd like to know where all the animals are," said Dick, wearily. "I haven't seen a blamed thing since we started."