Our heroes spent a doleful night, looking at their crammed note-books and those two hardly legible sheets of paper, all that remained of their painful and laboured efforts.
They had plenty of pencils, but not one blank scrap of paper to use them on. The wail of Ramma rang in their hearts, and for a time they were disconsolate.
Then Ned plucked up his courage and cheered his chums.
“We’ll just have to do a bit of memory practice after this, boys, and put down all we have seen when we get back to civilisation.”
“Let us keep these two sheets carefully as a specimen of what we are capable of. I fancy they will rather impress our great chief when he reads them.”
Comforted with this reflection, they packed their note-books and the manuscript carefully inside their medicine-chest, and devoted their future days to adventures, and their evenings to criticism on the faulty writings of other travellers. This cheered and elevated their minds greatly, until the time came when note-books and style were completely swallowed up by action as their valise had been by the saurian.
When Cecil Rhodes read those two rescued pages he laid back in his chair and wept. When asked by Dr Jim the cause of his emotion, he replied that it was out of pity for that poor crocodile. Even the most loathsome of reptiles deserved commiseration for such a dire fate.
We quote a few extracts from the precious manuscript which affected this most reticent of men so visibly. A little will be sufficient to prove how thoroughly in earnest our heroes were.
“July 28.—The palaeolithic region over which we are passing possesses fertile streaks of fluviatile deposits that are most encouraging to future agriculturists. This superincumbent alluvium is most effusive on the depressed basins or water-sheds. Here also the tsetse fly is indigenous and multitudinous. Three of our horses have succumbed to the virulence of these pestiferous and dipterous insects.
“Memo.—The tsetse is similar in appearance and magnitude to the ordinary house epidemic.