This he said with a shake of the head which intimated that he knew what he was talking about. I could not make out what he was driving at, and waited patiently for the result.
We were up early the next morning, and all three set about preparations for the lunch of the next day. We cleaned out the tent and made it as presentable as possible; and by the time we were through with our work we all admitted that it had never yet been as orderly as it was then. We had three iron camp-stools and sundry chests and boxes, and we had a table, circular in form, around the center-pole. The table perplexed us, as it would seat three comfortably and four fairly well, but five around that table made altogether too close sitting.
"What's the matter," said Jack, "with ranging our two wagons side by side, and stretching the canvas cover from one wagon to the other, so as to form a big awning? Then, by means of chests and boxes, we can rig up a table under this awning, and have much more room than in the tent. We can use the tent as a reception-room, and when luncheon is ready we'll adjourn to the dining-saloon."
Harry and I accepted the suggestion as a capital one, and it was immediately acted upon. The position of the wagons was changed, the ground beneath them was cleaned up and leveled, and the wagon-cover stretched across. We carpeted the ground with skins of some of the animals we had killed, and altogether made a very comfortable dining-hall. Jack abandoned his idea of piling up boxes to form a table, and instead of that he fashioned a temporary table out of the covers of some of the boxes, supported on sticks driven into the ground, and connected by means of cross-sticks. We were at a loss for a table-cover, but improvised one from a piece of canvas that had been brought along for mending the tent in case of its injury.
These preparations were complete by a little past noon, or enough so to make it easy to finish them in a little while. We took a slight luncheon and then went out hunting, I in pursuit of gemsbok—in which I was successful—Harry after a young buffalo, and Jack in search of vegetable provender. Jack said that a salad was necessary for a fashionable luncheon; he had seen a plant growing on the bank of the river which he thought resembled lettuce. He said he would get a quantity of the stuff and eat heartily of it that night; if it did not kill him by morning he would consider it a safe material for the concoction of the salad.
When he brought the vegetable into camp Harry and I were struck with its resemblance to lettuce. Jack said that the sea-cows ate freely of it, and therefore it was not poisonous to them. "But then, you know," he continued, "what a sea-cow can eat and what we can eat may be two different things. A sea-cow looks as if it could eat a sewing-machine or a cotton-loom without impairing its digestion, and so it's necessary to make an experiment. I'll give the lettuce to one of the oxen and eat some myself."
I can add that neither the ox nor Jack was injured in the least by the South African lettuce; so we added it to our bill of fare, not only for that day, but for many a day thereafter, whenever we could find it.
CHAPTER XI.
ICE-MAKING IN AFRICA—A HUNTERS' LUNCHEON—AFTER
GEMSBOK AGAIN.
The next morning Jack's stroke of paralysis in the way of a feast developed itself. He fished out from one of the wagons a box containing a small machine for making ice. The machine was small, and also its capacity: it could make two pounds of ice in three hours, and that was the utmost of which it was capable. I forget the name of the machine, but it was of French manufacture, and Jack said in case it got out of repair it was necessary to send the thing to Paris. It worked in an odd sort of way, as the ice was obtained by means of the condensation of ammonia-gas into the fluid form, and the gas was formed by building a fire under a retort. It struck me as very funny that heat was required for making ice, but so it was.