"
In the meantime, they had reached the coast of Waldeck, and having
landed, they found the outhouses and sheds that had been erected there
in satisfactory order; the apes had not forgotten a battue that had
once been got up for their special behoof, as not an individual was to
be seen in the neighborhood. A morass of the district that had been
converted into a rice plantation, promised an abundant crop; and the
cotton plants, that Frank had once mistaken for flakes of snow, reared
their woolly blossoms, looking for all the world like the powdered
heads of our ancestors. After a slight repast, the pinnace was once
more in motion, and the party steering for Prospect Hill.
"Ah," sighed Willis, "I wish we had only Sir Marmaduke Travers' cage
here."
"Cage!" cried Fritz, laughing, "what, to shut up the game first and
shoot it afterwards?" "No, quite the reverse: to shut up the hunters."
"Ah, you would serve us in the same way as Louis XI. served Cardinal
Balue."
"I know nothing of either Louis XI. or Cardinal Balue; but the cage I
speak of was an excellent invention, for all that."
"Which you would like to prove to us by caging ourselves, eh?"
"Sir Marmaduke Travers," continued Willis, "was an English gentleman,
and he was travelling in Coromandel, no one knew why or for what
purpose.
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