"Yo' don't know about dat, chile. Look at uddert'ings. Did yo'gran'fadder expect to ride at de rate ob sixty miles an hour? Did he expect to send a telegram to San Francisco in a couple ob minutes? Did he eber dream ob talkin' to sumboddy in Chicago froo a telephone? Did he knew anyt'ing about electric lights, or movin' pictures, or carriages wot aint got no bosses, but run wid gasoline or sumfing like dat? I tell yo, Massah Tom, we don't know wot we is comin' to!"
"You are quite right, Alexander," said Mr. Rover, who had overheard the talk. "Science is making wonderful strides. Some day I expect to grow com and wheat, yes, potatoes and other vegetables, by electricity," and then Randolph Rover branched off into a long discourse on scientific farming that almost took away poor Aleck's breath.
"He's a most wonderful man, yo' uncle!" whispered the colored man to Sam afterward. "Fust t'ing yo' know he'll be growin' corn in de com crib already shucked!" and he laughed softly to himself.
On and on over the mighty Atlantic bounded the steamer. One day was very much like another, excepting that on Sundays there was a religious service, which nearly everybody attended. The boys had become quite attached to Mortimer Blaze and listened eagerly to the many hunting tales he had to tell.
"I wish you were going with us," said Tom to him. "I like your style, as you Englishman put it."
"Thanks, Rover, and I must say I cotton to you, as the Americans put it," laughed the hunter. "Well, perhaps we'll meet in the interior, who knows?"
"Are you going up the Congo?"
"I haven't decided yet. I am hoping to meet some friends at Boma.
Otherwise I may go further down the coast."
The steamer bad now struck the equator, and as it was midsummer the weather was extremely warm, and the smell of the oozing tar, pouring from every joint, was sickening. But the weather suited Alexander Pop perfectly.
"Dis am jest right," he said. "I could sleep eall de time, 'ceptin' when de meal gong rings."