“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Griggs politely.
“Well, don’t do it again,” said Ned shortly.—“Phew! How hot it is! I’m sure it’s ever so much hotter than it has been before.”
“Much,” said Chris, with his eyes twinkling, but he looked straight before him. So did Griggs, and Ned went on—
“It’s just as if the sand got to be red-hot and all the heat was reflected back in one’s face. I wouldn’t care, though, only it’s so dull and monot—dreary!” the boy snapped out, looking sharply from one to the other as if to see whether another remark was about to be made respecting his repetition; but neither of his companions moved a muscle of his face, and he went on murmuring in the same irritable way—
“There seem to be no fish to catch, no birds to shoot. I wouldn’t have believed that there could have been so much miserable desert if I hadn’t seen it. I quite thought that by this time, after getting right away from all settlements and into the wildest of the wild country—”
“What!” said Griggs sharply. “Oh, nonsense! Wildest of the wild? Why, this is nothing to what we’ve got to come. We haven’t seen a regular good mountain yet.”
“No, nor yet a wild beast. I thought we should have had plenty of adventures with them by now.”
“Oh, that’s what you mean, is it?” cried Griggs, with mock seriousness, giving Chris a peculiar look at the same time, as if asking him to back up any assertions that he might make. “You expected that we would spend half our time shooting lions and stalking tigers?”
“Yes,” said Ned, passing his hand over his eyes and shaking his head, as if the heat had made him sleepy and giddy. “No, no!” he added hastily. “Of course I know that there are no lions and tigers here. You’re laughing at me.”
“Well, it’s enough to make a cat laugh to hear you go on finding fault, when here we are in a regular wonderful country, such as I should never have expected to find so soon. Of course I know that it wouldn’t do for a plantation, but here we are, just at the beginning of rising ground, and a mile or two further we shall be all amongst rocks and stones, and, for all we can tell, we shall come upon the sugar up yonder among those mountains rising up as if they were growing out of what was a plain.”