"Fust t'ing yo' know he'll be growin' corn in
de com crib already shucked!" and he laughed softly to himself.
On and on over the mighty Atlantic bounded the steamer. One day
was very much like another, excepting that on Sundays there was a
religious service, which nearly everybody attended. The boys had
become quite attached to Mortimer Blaze and listened eagerly to
the many hunting tales he had to tell.
"I wish you were going with us," said Tom to him. "I like your
style, as you Englishman put it."
"Thanks, Rover, and I must say I cotton to you, as the Americans
put it," laughed the hunter. "Well, perhaps we'll meet in the
interior, who knows?"
"Are you going up the Congo?"
"I haven't decided yet. I am hoping to meet some friends at Boma.
Otherwise I may go further down the coast."
The steamer bad now struck the equator, and as it was midsummer
the weather was extremely warm, and the smell of the oozing tar,
pouring from every joint, was sickening. But the weather suited
Alexander Pop perfectly.
"Dis am jest right," he said. "I could sleep eall de time,
'ceptin' when de meal gong rings."
"Blood will tell," laughed Randolph Rover. "When you land,
Alexander, you ought to feel perfectly at home."
"Perhaps, sah; but I dun reckon de United States am good enough
for any man, sah, white or colored."
"Right you are," put in Dick. "It's the greatest country on the
globe."
It was a clear day a week later when the lookout announced land
dead ahead.
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