My First Attempt Was Made At Talagouga One Very Hot Afternoon.
M.
and Mme.
Forget were, I thought, safe having their siestas, Oranie
was with Mme. Gacon. I knew where Mme. Gacon was for certain; she
was with M. Gacon; and I knew he was up in the sawmill shed, out of
sight of the river, because of the soft thump, thump, thump of the
big water-wheel. There was therefore no one to keep me out of
mischief, and I was too frightened to go into the forest that
afternoon, because on the previous afternoon I had been stalked as a
wild beast by a cannibal savage, and I am nervous. Besides, and
above all, it is quite impossible to see other people, even if they
are only black, naked savages, gliding about in canoes, without
wishing to go and glide about yourself. So I went down to where the
canoes were tied by their noses to the steep bank, and finding a
paddle, a broken one, I unloosed the smallest canoe. Unfortunately
this was fifteen feet or so long, but I did not know the
disadvantage of having, as it were, a long-tailed canoe then - I did
shortly afterwards.
The promontories running out into the river on each side of the
mission beach give a little stretch of slack water between the bank
and the mill-race-like current of the Ogowe, and I wisely decided to
keep in the slack water, until I had found out how to steer - most
important thing steering.
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