"Africa's just like all the one horse circuses," replied Doc. "They advertise the greatest collection of wild animals in captivity and when you get there all they have is a mangy lion and a couple of motheaten elephants."
"Golly! Wouldn't you like to see a real lion, or an elephant, or something?" sighed Dick.
"Look! Look!" exclaimed Doc suddenly. "There! There! See 'em?"
In the distance a small herd of springbok ran swiftly and gracefully across the veldt, the dainty little animals occasionally leaping high into the air. As the animals disappeared the boys again relapsed into attitudes of watchful waiting.
"I wish they'd been lions," said Dick.
The train, deserting the open country, entered a great forest, dark, gloomy, mysterious. Mighty trees, festooned with vines, rose from a tangle of riotous undergrowth along the right-of-way, hiding everything that lay beyond that impenetrable wall of flower-starred green,—a wall that added to the mystery of all that imagination could picture of the savage life moving silently behind it. There was no sign of life. The forest seemed like a dead thing.
The monotony of it, as the hours passed, weighed heavily upon the boys.
"Say," said Doc, "I'm getting tired of looking at trees. I'm going to practice some of my magic tricks. Look at this one, Dick."
He drew a silver coin from his pocket, a shilling, and held it upon his open palm. "Ladies and gentlemen!" he declaimed. "We have here an ordinary silver shilling, worth twelve pence. Step right up and examine it, feel of it, bite it! You see that it is gen-u-ine. You will note that I have no accomplices. Now, ladies and gentlemen, watch me closely!"
He placed his other palm over the coin, hiding it, clasped his hands, blew upon them, raised them above his head. "Abacadabra! Allo, presto, change cars and be gone! Now you see it, now you don't!" He opened his hands and held them palms up. The coin had vanished.