"We shall only be too happy to go if you can manage it," replied Robin;
"but Stumps, what about him? We can't leave Stumps behind, you know."

"Well. I'll try to get Stumps smuggled aboard as a stoker or something,
if possible, but to say truth, I don't feel quite so sure about that
matter," replied Frank.

"But shall we have time for this trip if you should prove successful?"
asked Sam.

"Plenty of time," returned his friend; "coaling is a slow as well as a
dirty process, and to ship thousands of tons is not a trifle. I daresay
we shall be more than a week here before the shore-end is fixed and all
ready to start."

"Well then, Frank," said Sam; "adieu, till we meet as shipmates."

The railway soon conveyed our adventurers a considerable distance into
the interior of the country.

At the station where Redpath and his guests got out, a vehicle was
procured sufficiently large to hold them all, and the road over which
they rapidly passed bore out the character which the electrician had
given to it. Every species of beautiful scenery presented itself--from
the low scrubby plain, with clumps of tropical plants here and there, to
undulating uplands and hills.

"You must have some difficulties in your telegraph operations here,"
said Robin to Redpath, "with which we have not to contend in Europe."

"A few," replied his friend, "especially in the wilder parts of the
East. Would you believe it," he added, addressing himself to Letta,
"that wild animals frequently give us great trouble? Whenever a wild
pig, a tiger, or a buffalo, takes it into his head to scratch himself,
he uses one of our telegraph-posts if he finds it handy. Elephants
sometimes butt them down with their thick heads, by way of pastime, I
suppose, for they are not usually fond of posts and wire as food. Then
bandicoots and porcupines burrow under them and bring them to the
ground, while kites and crows sit on the wires and weigh them down.
Monkeys, as usual, are most mischievous, for they lay hold of the wires
with tails and paws, swinging from one to another, and thus form living
conductors, which tend to mix and confuse the messages."

"But does not the electricity hurt the monkeys?" asked Letta.

"O no! It does them no injury; and birds sitting on the wires are never
killed by it, as many people suppose. The electricity passes them
unharmed, and keeps faithfully to the wire. If a monkey, indeed, had a
tail long enough to reach from