These Flowers We Came Across In Nearly Every
Type Of Forest All The Way, For Rubber Abounds Here.
I will weary you no longer now with the different kinds of forest
and only tell you I have let you off several.
The natives have
separate names for seven different kinds, and these might, I think,
be easily run up to nine.
A certain sort of friendship soon arose between the Fans and me. We
each recognised that we belonged to that same section of the human
race with whom it is better to drink than to fight. We knew we
would each have killed the other, if sufficient inducement were
offered, and so we took a certain amount of care that the inducement
should not arise. Gray Shirt and Pagan also, their trade friends,
the Fans treated with an independent sort of courtesy; but Silence,
Singlet, the Passenger, and above all Ngouta, they openly did not
care a row of pins for, and I have small doubt that had it not been
for us other three they would have killed and eaten these very
amiable gentlemen with as much compunction as an English sportsman
would kill as many rabbits. They on their part hated the Fan, and
never lost an opportunity of telling me "these Fan be bad man too
much." I must not forget to mention the other member of our party,
a Fan gentleman with the manners of a duke and the habits of a
dustbin. He came with us, quite uninvited by me, and never asked
for any pay; I think he only wanted to see the fun, and drop in for
a fight if there was one going on, and to pick up the pieces
generally. He was evidently a man of some importance from the way
the others treated him; and moreover he had a splendid gun, with a
gorilla skin sheath for its lock, and ornamented all over its stock
with brass nails. His costume consisted of a small piece of dirty
rag round his loins; and whenever we were going through dense
undergrowth, or wading a swamp, he wore that filament tucked up
scandalously short. Whenever we were sitting down in the forest
having one of our nondescript meals, he always sat next to me and
appropriated the tin. Then he would fill his pipe, and turning to
me with the easy grace of aristocracy, would say what may be
translated as "My dear Princess, could you favour me with a
lucifer?"
I used to say, "My dear Duke, charmed, I'm sure," and give him one
ready lit.
I dared not trust him with the box whole, having a personal
conviction that he would have kept it. I asked him what he would do
suppose I was not there with a box of lucifers; and he produced a
bush-cow's horn with a neat wood lid tied on with tie tie, and from
out of it he produced a flint and steel and demonstrated.
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