{96} These May Be Fetish Huts, Or, As The
Captain Of The Sparrow Would Say, "Again They Mayn't." For I
Have
seen similar huts in the villages round Libreville, which were store
places for roof mats, of which the natives
Carefully keep a store
dry and ready for emergencies in the way of tornadoes, or to sell.
We stop abreast of this village. Inhabitants in scores rush out and
form an excited row along the vertical bank edge, several of the
more excited individuals falling over it into the water.
Yells from our passengers on the lower deck. Yells from inhabitants
on shore. Yells of vite, vite from the Captain. Dogs bark, horns
bray, some exhilarated individual thumps the village drum, canoes
fly out from the bank towards us. Fearful scrimmage heard going on
all the time on the deck below. As soon as the canoes are
alongside, our passengers from the lower deck, with their bundles
and their dogs, pour over the side into them. Canoes rock wildly
and wobble off rapidly towards the bank, frightening the passengers
because they have got their best clothes on, and fear that the
Eclaireur will start and upset them altogether with her wash.
On reaching the bank, the new arrivals disappear into brown clouds
of wives and relations, and the dogs into fighting clusters of
resident dogs. Happy, happy day! For those men who have gone
ashore have been away on hire to the government and factories for a
year, and are safe home in the bosoms of their families again, and
not only they themselves, but all the goods they have got in pay.
The remaining passengers below still yell to their departed friends;
I know not what they say, but I expect it's the Fan equivalent for
"Mind you write.
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