"Indeed!" exclaimed Jack.

"Yes; I'll put a bear-skin or some sort of fur on your shoulders, and
tie a lady's boa to you for a tail, and send you into the woods. The
gorillas will be sure to mistake you for a relative until you get quite
close; then you'll take one pace to the left with the left foot (as the
volunteers say), I'll take one to the front with the right--at fifty
yards, ready--present--bang, and down goes the huge puggy with a bullet
right between its two eyes! There. And Ralph's agreed to go too."

"O Peterkin, I've done nothing of the sort. You _proposed_ it."

"Well, and isn't that the same thing? I wonder, Ralph that you can give
way to such mean-spirited prevarication. What? `It's not
prevarication!' Don't say that now; you know it is. Ah! you may laugh,
my boy, but you have promised to go with me and Jack to Africa, and go
you shall."

And so, reader, it was ultimately settled, and in the course of two
weeks more we three were on our way to the land of the slave, the black
savage, and the gorilla.

CHAPTER TWO.

LIFE IN THE WILD WOODS.

One night, about five or six weeks after our resolution to go to Africa
on a hunting expedition was formed, I put to myself the question, "Can
it be possible that we are actually here, in the midst of it?"

"Certainly, my boy, in the very thick of it," answered Peterkin, in a
tone of voice which made Jack laugh, while I started and exclaimed--

"Why, Peterkin, how did you come to guess my thoughts?"

"Because, Ralph, you have got into a habit of thinking aloud, which may
do very well as long as you have no secrets to keep but it may prove
inconvenient some day, so I warn you in time."

Not feeling disposed at that time to enter into a bantering conversation
with my volatile companion, I made no reply, but abandoned myself again
to the pleasing fancies and feelings which were called up by the
singular scene in the midst of which I found myself.

It seemed as if it were but yesterday when we drove about the crowded
streets of London making the necessary purchases for our intended
journey, and now, as I gazed around, every object that met my eye seemed
strange, and wild, and foreign, and romantic. We three were reclining
round an enormous wood fire in the midst of a great forest, the trees
and plants of which were quite new to me, and totally unlike those of my
native land. Rich luxuriance of vegetation was the feature that filled
my mind mos