Forget provide me with everything I can possibly
require, and say that the blood of half my crew is
Half alcohol; on
the whole it is patent they don't expect to see me again, and I
forgive them, because they don't seem cheerful over it; but still it
is not reassuring - nothing is about this affair, and it's going to
rain. It does, as we go up the river to Njole, where there is
another risk of the affair collapsing, by the French authorities
declining to allow me to proceed. On we paddled, M'bo the head man
standing in the bows of the canoe in front of me, to steer, then I,
then the baggage, then the able-bodied seamen, including the cook
also standing and paddling; and at the other extremity of the canoe-
-it grieves me to speak of it in this unseamanlike way, but in these
canoes both ends are alike, and chance alone ordains which is bow
and which is stern - stands Pierre, the first officer, also steering;
the paddles used are all of the long-handled, leaf-shaped Igalwa
type. We get up just past Talagouga Island and then tie up against
the bank of M. Gazenget's plantation, and make a piratical raid on
its bush for poles. A gang of his men come down to us, but only to
chat. One of them, I notice, has had something happen severely to
one side of his face. I ask M'bo what's the matter, and he answers,
with a derisive laugh, "He be fool man, he go for tief plantain and
done got shot." M'bo does not make it clear where the sin in this
affair is exactly located; I expect it is in being "fool man."
Having got our supply of long stout poles we push off and paddle on
again.
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