And all this time the lions and tigers was sorting out the clothes, and trying to divide them up so there would be some for all, but there was a misunderstanding about it somewheres, on account of some of them trying to hog more than their share; so there was another insurrection, and you never see anything like it in the world. There must ’a’ been fifty of them, all mixed up together, snorting and roaring and snapping and biting and tearing, legs and tails in the air, and you couldn’t tell which was which, and the sand and fur a-flying. And when they got done, some was dead and some was limping off crippled, and the rest was setting around on the battlefield, some of them licking their sore places and the others looking up at us and seemed to be kind of inviting us to come down and have some fun, but which we didn’t want any.
As for the clothes, they warn’t any, any more. Every last rag of them was inside of the animals; and not agreeing with them very well, I don’t reckon, for there was considerable many brass buttons on them, and there was knives in the pockets, too, and smoking tobacco, and nails and chalk and marbles and fishhooks and things. But I wasn’t caring. All that was bothering me was, that all we had now was the professor’s clothes, a big enough assortment, but not suitable to go into company with, if we came across any, because the britches was as long as tunnels, and the coats and things according. Still, there was everything a tailor needed, and Jim was a kind of jack legged tailor, and he allowed he could soon trim a suit or two down for us that would answer.
CHAPTER IX.
TOM DISCOURSES ON THE DESERT
Still, we thought we would drop down there a minute, but on another errand. Most of the professor’s cargo of food was put up in cans, in the new way that somebody had just invented; the rest was fresh. When you fetch Missouri beefsteak to the Great Sahara, you want to be particular and stay up in the coolish weather. So we reckoned we would drop down into the lion market and see how we could make out there.
We hauled in the ladder and dropped down till we was just above the reach of the animals, then we let down a rope with a slip-knot in it and hauled up a dead lion, a small tender one, then yanked up a cub tiger. We had to keep the congregation off with the revolver, or they would ’a’ took a hand in the proceedings and helped.
We carved off a supply from both, and saved the skins, and hove the rest overboard. Then we baited some of the professor’s hooks with the fresh meat and went a-fishing. We stood over the lake just a convenient distance above the water, and catched a lot of the nicest fish you ever see. It was a most amazing good supper we had; lion steak, tiger steak, fried fish, and hot corn-pone. I don’t want nothing better than that.
“We catched a lot of the nicest fish you ever see.”
We had some fruit to finish off with. We got it out of the top of a monstrous tall tree. It was a very slim tree that hadn’t a branch on it from the bottom plumb to the top, and there it bursted out like a feather-duster. It was a pa’m-tree, of course; anybody knows a pa’m-tree the minute he see it, by the pictures. We went for cocoanuts in this one, but there warn’t none. There was only big loose bunches of things like oversized grapes, and Tom allowed they was dates, because he said they answered the description in the Arabian Nights and the other books. Of course they mightn’t be, and they might be poison; so we had to wait a spell, and watch and see if the birds et them. They done it; so we done it, too, and they was most amazing good.
By this time monstrous big birds begun to come and settle on the dead animals. They was plucky creturs; they would tackle one end of a lion that was being gnawed at the other end by another lion. If the lion drove the bird away, it didn’t do no good; he was back again the minute the lion was busy.