I have heard how
good M. du Chaillu fared after telling you some beauties, and now
you come away from the Fan village and down the Rembwe river.
CHAPTER XI. DOWN THE REMBWE.
Setting forth how the Voyager descends the Rembwe River, with divers
excursions and alarms, in the company of a black trader, and returns
safely to the Coast.
Getting away from Agonjo seemed as if it would be nearly as
difficult as getting to it, but as the quarters were comfortable and
the society fairly good, I was not anxious. I own the local scenery
was a little too much of the Niger Delta type for perfect beauty,
just the long lines of mangrove, and the muddy river lounging almost
imperceptibly to sea, and nothing else in sight. Mr. Glass,
however, did not take things so philosophically. I was on his
commercial conscience, for I had come in from the bush and there was
money in me. Therefore I was a trade product - a new trade stuff
that ought to be worked up and developed; and he found himself
unable to do this, for although he had secured the first parcel, as
it were, and got it successfully stored, yet he could not ship it,
and he felt this was a reproach to him.
Many were his lamentations that the firm had not provided him with a
large sailing canoe and a suitable crew to deal with this new line
of trade. I did my best to comfort him, pointing out that the most
enterprising firm could not be expected to provide expensive things
like these, on the extremely remote chance of ladies arriving per
bush at Agonjo - in fact not until the trade in them was well
developed. But he refused to see it in this light and harped upon
the subject, wrapped up, poor man, in a great coat and a muffler,
because his ague was on him.
I next tried to convince Mr. Glass that any canoe would do for me to
go down in. "No," he said, "any canoe will not do;" and he
explained that when you got down the Rembwe to 'Como Point you were
in a rough, nasty bit of water, the Gaboon, which has a fine
confused set of currents from the tidal wash and the streams of the
Rembwe and 'Como rivers, in which it would be improbable that a
river canoe could live any time worth mentioning. Progress below
'Como Point by means of mere paddling he considered impossible.
There was nothing for it but a big sailing canoe, and there was no
big sailing canoe to be had. I think Mr. Glass got a ray of comfort
out of the fact that Messrs. John Holt's sub-agent was, equally with
himself, unable to ship me.
At this point in the affair there entered a highly dramatic figure.
He came on to the scene suddenly and with much uproar, in a way that
would have made his fortune in a transpontine drama.
