“ ‘Walk together.
Holding each other’s tails,’ ”
quoted Wally, dreamily. “It would be lovely; only they’re not supposed to do it in the middle of the day. Personally, I don’t like monkeys.”
“Well, neither do I,” Norah said. “But it’s all so wonderful—to think I’m actually coming to a place where there can be such things walking about, and not in a zoo. Wally, doesn’t it make you feel queer?”
“Yes, rather,” admitted Wally. “I’ve been pinching myself, to try and realise that I was really coming to Africa. Africa has always seemed so awfully far off—a sort of confused dream of Scipio, and Moors, and dervishes, and lions, and King Solomon’s Mines, and the Mountains of the Moon. The Boer War brought it nearer, of course, but even so, it was still pretty mysterious. You know, I was in Tasmania last year, and Edward’s car broke down near a saw-mill on the Huon. I was poking about while they fixed her up, and I sat down on a pile of sleepers.”
“Yes?” said Norah, as he paused. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“No reason—only I got talking to one of the men, and he told me those sleepers were being cut for the Cape to Cairo railway. That made me feel awfully queer—to think I’d been sitting on a sleeper that was going to lie out in the middle of Africa, and have fiery, untamed lions and giraffes and elephants strolling across it.”
“For all you know it never got further than a Cape Town suburb,” said Jim, unfeelingly.
“Oh, get out!” Wally uttered, in disgust. “If I like to think of the zoo walking over it, why shouldn’t I?”
“Why not, indeed—when it began with a donkey sitting on it?” grinned Jim. “Anyhow, here’s old Africa; and I don’t see that this part of it is unlike any other old wharf I’ve seen.”