ING.

"Well, major, what are your orders for the day?" asked Tom Brown one
fine morning after breakfast, while they were enjoying their usual pipe
under the shade of a large umbrageous tree.

"You'd better try the river that we have just come to," said the major.

"Do you think me amphibious, that you should always assign me that
work?" asked Tom.

"Not exactly, Tom, but I know you are fond of telling fibs, and perhaps
the amphibious animals may afford you some scope in that way. At all
events they are capable of such astonishing feats that if you merely
relate the truth about them you will be sure to get credit in England
for telling fibs--like poor Mungo Park, who was laughed at all his life
for a notorious drawer of the long-bow, although there never was a more
truthful man."

"People won't judge _us_ so harshly, major," said Wilkins; "for so many
African travellers have corroborated Mungo Park's stories that the truth
is pretty well known and believed by people of average education. But
pray is it your lordship's pleasure that I should accompany Tom? You
know he cannot take care of himself, and no one of the party can act so
powerfully as a check on his inveterate propensity to inordinate smoking
as myself."

"You must have studied Johnson's dictionary very closely in your
boyhood," said Tom, puffing a prolonged cloud as a termination to the
sentence.

"But, major, if you do condemn me to his company, please let us have
Mafuta again, for Wilkins and I are like two uncongenial stones, and he
acts as lime to keep us together."

"Don't you think that Hicks had better be consulted before we make
arrangements?" suggested Pearson.

"Hear, hear," cried Ogilvie; "and I should like to know what is to be
done with Brand and Anson, for they are both very much down with fever
of some sort this morning."

"Leave Jumbo with them," said Tom Brown; "he's better at nursing than
hunting. By the way, was it not he who nursed the native that died last
night in the kraal?"

"It was, and they say he killed the poor nigger by careless treatment,"
said Pearson.

"What nigger do you refer to?" asked Ogilvie.

"The one who died--but, I forgot, you were out after that hyena when it
happened, and so I suppose have not heard of it," said Pearson. "We had
a funeral in the village over there last night, and they say that our
fellow Jumbo, who it seems was once a friend of the sick man, offered to
sit up with him last night.