"You've reversed the old adage," said he, "about the odd things you see when you haven't got a gun. You certainly saw a lot of very odd things, and had your guns along at the same time."
CHAPTER XX.
AN ALARM—THE LADIES MISSING—WHAT HAPPENED TO
THEM—THE RESCUE.
We dined that night on eland-steak and boiled hippopotamus, and found both dishes excellent; and we pieced out the dinner with some tinned peaches, which Jack drew from the recesses of the wagon. Blessings on the head of the man who invented tinning, or canning, edible things! They have softened the asperities of life in rough regions to a wonderful extent, and have rendered it possible for men to live a long time away from fresh meats and fruits without danger of that terrible disease, scurvy. And furthermore, they have enabled the traveler in distant lands to imagine himself in his own home when he sits down to a table containing the fruits and meats to which he was accustomed in his boyhood days.
This can of peaches recalls to my mind a Fourth-of-July dinner at which half a dozen of us Americans once sat down, far in the interior of China, on the upper waters of the Yang-tse-Kiang. We had chicken-soup, boiled salmon, roast turkey, boiled corned beef, two or three kinds of vegetables, and a plum-pudding, each and every thing having been tinned in America, and shipped thence to the Celestial Empire. And it was by no means a shabby dinner; on the contrary, it would have been a good one in New York or Boston. The turkey was not cut up and put into a small can, as you might imagine, but was served whole, the can having been made to fit him as though he were a Fifth Avenue "swell" and the tinsmith were a fashionable tailor.
We had our smoke after dinner, and then retired. During our smoke we laid our plans for the next day; but it is hardly necessary to say what they were, as they were not carried out.
Just as we were sitting down to breakfast, Kleinboy, the after-rider of our amazon friends, came riding into camp at full speed. We knew something was wrong, and immediately stepped out to meet him.
"What is the matter?" I asked, as soon as he drew rein and brought his panting horse to a halt.
"The ladies are missing!" he answered, "missing since yesterday!"
"Missing!" we exclaimed. "How is that?"