Little Lucys Wonderful Globe | Page 9

a slice of bread and delicious butter, and a good piece
of cheese, all on a wooden platter, and a little bowl of new milk. Lucy
thought she had never tasted anything so nice.
"And now the gracious little lady will rest a little while," said Katherl,
"whilst I go and help Rose to strain the milk."
So Lucy waited, but she felt so tired with her scramble that she could
not help nodding off to sleep, though she would have liked very much
to have stayed longer with the dear little Tyrolese. But we know by this

time where she always found herself when she awoke.


CHAPTER VI
. 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.


CHAPTER VII
. LAPLANDERS.
"It shall not be a hot country next time," said Lucy, "though, after all,
the whale oil was not much worse than the castor oil.--Mother Bunch,
did your whaler always go to Greenland, and never to any nicer place?"
"Well, Missie, once we were driven between foul winds and icebergs
up into