"Friendly to some—not to all," replied the Krooman, who for some unaccountable reason had taken a strange dislike to the professor. "Come," he said, intoning to Frank and Harry, "we go see get chicken, maybe pork."
"Say, can't we come along, Frank?" asked Billy and Lathrop their faces falling.
Frank consulted Sikaso who merely said:
"Little fat white boy, with round, glass four-eyes talk too much."
"Well," laughed Frank, "I think I can promise for him that he won't do any talking that will cause any harm this evening."
"Talk too much, indeed," grumbled Billy highly offended, "why at home my folks were thinking of having a doctor treat me for bashfulness I'm so retiring in my disposition."
As soon as the laugh that this remark of the disgruntled reporter had caused had subsided—even old Sikaso giving a grim smile as he took in the purport of it—the little party set out down a native trail toward the village.
As the tom-tom beating increased in loudness as the village drew near, the boys' hearts began to beat a little faster. At last they were about to see a real African village—such as they had read about in Stanley's and Livingstone's books—and other less authentic volumes. They almost stumbled on the place as they suddenly emerged into a clearing. It was a strange sight that met their eyes.
Arranged in a circle were fifty huts that resembled nothing so much as a collection of old-fashioned straw covered beehives, enlarged to shelter human bees. All about them women and children were bustling; setting about getting the evening meal. Before one hut sat a woman, pounding something in a stone pestle—"like the drugstore men use at home,"—whispered Lathrop to Billy.
The arrival of the little band created a stir. The hideous old man, with a sort of straw-bonnet, who had been beating on the antelope skin drum called by Sikaso a "tom-tom" saw them and instantly picked up his instrument and waddled off with as much dignity as his age and a much distended stomach would allow him. The younger men, however, advanced boldly toward the party. Some of them carried, spears, others held Birmingham matchlocks of the kind the British and French Governments have in vain tried to keep out of the hands of the West African natives. These guns are smuggled in by hundreds, by Arab traders who exchange the "gas-pipe" weapons worth perhaps two dollars a-piece for priceless ivory, and even human flesh for the slave dhows.