AFRICA.
Oh! oh! here is a little dried crocodile come alive, and opening a
horrid great mouth, lined with terrible teeth, at her.
No, he is no longer in the museum; he is in a broad river, yellow,
heavy, and thick with mud; the borders are crowded with enormous
reeds and rushes; there is no getting through; no breaking away
from him; here he comes; horrid, horrid beast! Oh, how could Lucy
have been so foolish as to want to travel in Africa up to the higher
parts of the Nile? How will she ever get back again? He will gobble
her up, her and Clare, who was trusted to her, and what will mamma
and sister do?
Hark! There's a cry, a great shout, and out jumps a little black
figure, with a stout club in his hand. Crash it goes down on the
head of master crocodile. The ugly beast is turning over on its
back and dying. Then Lucy has time to look at the little negro,
and he has time to look at her. What a droll figure he is, with
his wooly head and thick lips, the whites of his eyes and his teeth
gleaming so brightly, and his fat little black person shining all
over, as well it may, for he is rubbed from head to foot with
castor-oil. There it grows on the bush, with broad, beautiful, folded
leaves and red stems and the pretty grey and black nuts. Lucy
only wishes the negroes would keep it all to polish themselves
with, and not send any home.
She wants to give the little black fellow some reward for saving her
from the crocodile, and luckily Clare has on her long necklace of
blue glass beads. She puts it into his hand, and he twists it round
his black wool, and cuts such dances and capers for joy that Lucy
can hardly stand for laughing; but the sun shines scorching hot upon
her, and she gets under the shade of a tall date palm, with big
leaves all shooting out together at the top, and fine bunches of
dates below, all fresh and green, not like those papa sometimes
gives her at dessert.
The little negro, Tojo, asks if she would like some. He takes her
by the hand, and leads her into a whole cluster of little round mud
huts, telling her that he is Tojo, the king's son; she is his little
sister and these are all his mothers! Which is his real mother Lucy
cannot quite make out, for she sees an immense party of black women,
all shiny and polished, with a great many beads wound round their
heads, necks, ankles, and wrists; and nothing besides the tiniest
short petticoats: and all the fattest are the smartest; indeed, they
have gourds of milk beside them, and are drinking it all day long
to keep themselves fat. No sooner however is Lucy led in among them,
than they all close round, some singing and dancing, and others
laughing for joy, and crying, "Welcome, little daughter from the
land of spirits!" And then she finds out that they think she is
really Tojo's little sister, who died ten moons ago, come back
again from the grave as a white spirit.
Tojo's own mother, a very fat woman indeed, holds out her arms, as
big as bed-posts and terribly greasy, gives her a dose of sour milk
out of a gourd, makes her lie down with her head in her lap, and
begins to sing to her, till Lucy goes to sleep; and wakes, very
glad to see the crocodile as brown and hard and immovable as ever;
and that odd round gourd with a little hole in it, hanging up near
the ceiling.