“Yes, Dinny; the Zambesi swarms with them, I believe, and they run very large.”
“Och, mother, mother! and it’s a good thing ye don’t know where yer poor boy is all among black haythens, and lines, and crocodivils, and other foreign bastes of prey. I niver thought I’d come to such a thing as this. Shure it’s a horrid counthry altogether.”
“I think it a grand country, Dinny,” cried Dick; “and I shall ask father to stop out here for long enough.”
“Ah, be aisy, Masther Dick, dear, and don’t demane yerself to stop out here among the dirty blacks. Shure ye’re meant for better things. Jist think of it, darlin’, out here in the wildherness all these long months, and never once tasted mutton or beef.”
“But you’ve been living on prime venison and other game, Dinny.”
“An’ is it living ye call it—aiting thim bucks and doe things, like a black, or a wild baste?” said Dinny in tones of contempt. “Not so much as a pitaytie even or a pay. Shure I call it shtarving,” grumbled Dinny. “Look at that now.”
“That” was poor Coffee, who was so much better that he had been out once or twice upon short hunting expeditions, and was now tramping behind the waggon with his brother, engaged in what cannot better be described than as a game of romps with the dogs.
For these welcomed the advances of the Zulu boys with delight, racing and careering round them, making fierce attacks, and allowing themselves to be seized and thumped and rolled over, in what at times was a regular tangle of dogs and boys, after which there was a run to overtake the waggon.
Dinny, in spite of his grumbling, was a good deal pleased upon this day, for the route of the waggon took them by several salt-pools, whose waters the dogs rushed to lap, but came back shaking their heads and barking furiously, growling at Dick and Jack, who laughed at them, as if they were resenting a trick that had been played at their expense.
These salt-pools were very interesting, the salt forming in quite a crust, like ice, some inches below the surface; while to the surprise of Mr Rogers, he found beautiful palm and the queerly-shaped baobab-trees, flourishing in the salt-impregnated soil.