Page:Harris Dickson--Old Reliable in Africa.djvu/75

 bothered Zack. He hungered for the "Hot Cat Eating House," and for somebody who could understand that regular old-timey Unity States talk. From the minute he stepped off that first boat at Naples, Zack couldn't make out a word of what anybody was saying. Then they crossed Italy, and caught another boat. The Colonel said they were going to Greece, but Zack never saw any grease, just a lot of dry yellow hills, and no grass, where folks jabbered a whole lot worse than the Italians. That's where they took a third boat for Afriky Landing.

So here Zack was, on a Russian vessel, crowded with all kinds of people wearing their Mardi Gras clothes, Greeks, Slavs, Polacks, Turks, Russians, Huns, Gippies [sic]—squatting around the lower decks and jabbering to beat the band. But, some way or other, Zack couldn't get in on the jabber. He stood amongst them, tongue-tied and dumb; he, the Champeen Argufier of the Hot Cat Eating House, was staked out in the fields of silence, and fenced off from his kind. This gibble-gabble on the upper deck, and the gibberish amidships, made Zack's feet itch to get away. A lonesome black-faced figure, in store -bought clothes, and hat of wide-brimmed gray, he wandered from one chattering group to another, smiling in a neighborly fashion, but silent. Back, and back again he returned to the Colonel's chair.