there was considerable many brass buttons on them,
and there was knives in the pockets, too, and smoking
tobacco, and nails and chalk and marbles and fish-
hooks and things. But I wasn’t caring. All that was
bothering me was, that all we had now was the pro-
fessor’s clothes, a big enough assortment, but not suit-
able to go into company with, if we came across any,
because the britches was as long as tunnels, and the
coats and things according. Still, there was everything
a tailor needed, and Jim was a kind of jack legged
tailor, and he allowed he could soon trim a suit or two
down for us that would answer.
CHAPTER IX.
TOM DISCOURSES ON THE DESERT
STILL, we thought we would drop down there a
minute, but on another errand. Most of the pro-
fessor’s cargo of food was put up in cans, in the new
way that somebody had just invented; the rest was
fresh. When you fetch Missouri beefsteak to the
Great Sahara, you want to be particular and stay up
in the coolish weather. So we reckoned we would
drop down into the lion market and see how we could
make out there.
We hauled in the ladder and dropped down till we
was just above the reach of the animals, then we let
down a rope with a slip-knot in it and hauled up a
dead lion, a small tender one, then yanked up a cub
tiger. We had to keep the congregation off with the
revolver, or they would ‘a’ took a hand in the proceed-
ings and helped.
We carved off a supply from both, and saved the
skins, and hove the rest overboard. Then we baited
some of the professor’s hooks with the fresh meat and
went a-fishing. We stood over the lake just a con-
venient distance above the water, and catched a lot of
the nicest fish you ever see. It was a most amazing
good supper we had; lion steak, tiger steak, fried fish,
and hot corn-pone. I don’t want nothing better than
that.
We had some fruit to finish off with. We got it out
of the top of a monstrous tall tree. It was a very slim
tree that hadn’t a branch on it from the bottom plumb
to the top, and there it bursted out like a feather-
duster. It was a pa’m-tree, of course; anybody knows
a pa’m-tree the minute he see it, by the pictures. We
went for cocoanuts in this one, but there warn’t none.
There was only big loose bunches of things like over-
sized grapes, and Tom allowed they was dates, because
he said they answered the description in the Arabian
Nights and the other books. Of course they mightn’t
be, and they might be poison; so we had to wait a
spell, and watch and see if the birds et them. They
done it; so we done it, too, and they was most amaz-
ing good.
By this time monstrous big birds begun to come and
settle on the dead animals. They was plucky creturs;
they would tackle one end of a lion that was being
gnawed at the other end by another lion. If the lion
drove the bird away, it didn’t do no good; he was
back again the minute the lion was busy.
The big birds come out of every part of the sky —
you could make them out with the glass while they was
still so far away you couldn’t see them with your naked
eye. Tom said the birds didn’t find out the meat was
there by the smell; they had to find it out by seeing
it. Oh, but ain’t that an eye for you! Tom said at
the distance of five mile a patch of dead lions couldn’t
look any bigger than a person’s finger-nail, and he
couldn’t imagine how the birds could notice such a
little thing so far off.
It was strange and unnatural to see lion eat lion,
and we thought maybe they warn’t kin. But Jim said
that didn’t make no difference. He said a hog was
fond of her own children, and so was a spider, and he