e, and opening a
horrible 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 whatever will Mamma and sister do?

[Illustration: Hark! There's a cry, and out jumps a little black figure,
with a stout club in his hand.

_Page 58._]

Hark! There's a cry, a great shout, and out jumps a little black figure,
with a stout club in his hand: smash 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 woolly 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 that 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 dried 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 sh