They would have ended badly, some day or other,
he thought to himself; no matter what experience one has
with men, one does not travel always with impunity among
cannibals and wild beasts. So, Kennedy besought the doctor
to tie up his bark for life, having done enough for science,
and too much for the gratitude of men.
The doctor contented himself with making no reply to
this. He remained absorbed in his own reflections, giving
himself up to secret calculations, passing his nights among
heaps of figures, and making experiments with the
strangest-looking machinery, inexplicable to everybody but
himself. It could readily be guessed, though, that some great
thought was fermenting in his brain.
"What can he have been planning?" wondered Kennedy, when, in
the month of January, his friend quitted him to return to London.
He found out one morning when he looked into the Daily Telegraph.
"Merciful Heaven!" he exclaimed, "the lunatic! the
madman! Cross Africa in a balloon! Nothing but that
was wanted to cap the climax! That's what he's been
bothering his wits about these two years past!"
Now, reader, substitute for all these exclamation points,
as many ringing thumps with a brawny fist upon the table,
and you have some idea of the manual exercise that Dick
went through while he thus spoke.
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