“Yes, you are right; it is a beautiful tree. There is not another like it in all the country round, that I know of,” answered Mr Mackenzie. “I call it my watch tower. As you see, I have a rope ladder fixed to the lowest bough; and if I want to see anything that is going on within fifteen miles or so, all I have to do is to run up it with a spyglass. But you must be hungry, and I am sure the dinner is cooked. Come in, my friends; it is but a rough place, but well enough for these savage parts; and I can tell you what, we have got—a French cook.” And he led the way on to the veranda.
As I was following him, and wondering what on earth he could mean by this, there suddenly appeared, through the door that opened on to the veranda from the house, a dapper little man, dressed in a neat blue cotton suit, with shoes made of tanned hide, and remarkable for a bustling air and most enormous black mustachios, shaped into an upward curve, and coming to a point for all the world like a pair of buffalo-horns.
“Madame bids me for to say that dinnar is sarved. Messieurs, my compliments;” then suddenly perceiving Umslopogaas, who was loitering along after us and playing with his battleaxe, he threw up his hands in astonishment. “Ah, mais quel homme!” he ejaculated in French, “quel sauvage affreux! Take but note of his huge choppare and the great pit in his head.”
“Ay,” said Mr Mackenzie; “what are you talking about, Alphonse?”
“Talking about!” replied the little Frenchman, his eyes still fixed upon Umslopogaas, whose general appearance seemed to fascinate him; “why I talk of him”—and he rudely pointed—“of ce monsieur noir.”
At this everybody began to laugh, and Umslopogaas, perceiving that he was the object of remark, frowned ferociously, for he had a most lordly dislike of anything like a personal liberty.
“Parbleu!” said Alphonse, “he is angered—he makes the grimace. I like not his air. I vanish.” And he did with considerable rapidity.
Mr Mackenzie joined heartily in the shout of laughter which we indulged in. “He is a queer character—Alphonse,” he said. “By and by I will tell you his history; in the meanwhile let us try his cooking.”
“Might I ask,” said Sir Henry, after we had eaten a most excellent dinner, “how you came to have a French cook in these wilds?”
“Oh,” answered Mrs Mackenzie, “he arrived here of his own accord about a year ago, and asked to be taken into our service. He had got into some trouble in France, and fled to Zanzibar, where he found an application had been made by the French Government for his extradition. Whereupon he rushed off up-country, and fell in, when nearly starved, with our caravan of men, who were bringing us our annual supply of goods, and was brought on here. You should get him to tell you the story.”