It Was Fortunate, You Will Please
Understand, For My Future, That I Have Usually Been On Vessels Of
The British
African or the African lines when voyaging about this
West African sea-board, as the owners of these vessels prohibit
The
use of bad language on board, or goodness only knows what words I
might not have remembered and used in the Gaboon estuary.
We left Agonjo with as much bustle and shouting and general air of
brisk seamanship as Obanjo could impart to the affair, and the
hopeful mind might have expected to reach somewhere important by
nightfall. I did not expect that; neither, on the other hand, did I
expect that after we had gone a mile and only four, as the early
ballad would say, that we should pull up and anchor against a small
village for the night; but this we did, the captain going ashore to
see for cargo, and to get some more crew.
There were grand times ashore that night, and the captain returned
on board about 2 A.M. with some rubber and pissava and two new hands
whose appearance fitted them to join our vessel; for a more
villainous-looking set than our crew I never laid eye on. One
enormously powerful fellow looked the incarnation of the horrid
negro of buccaneer stories, and I admired Obanjo for the way he kept
them in hand. We had now also acquired a small dug-out canoe as
tender, and a large fishing-net. About 4 A.M. in the moonlight we
started to drop down river on the tail of the land breeze, and as I
observed Obanjo wanted to sleep I offered to steer. After putting
me through an examination in practical seamanship, and passing me,
he gladly accepted my offer, handed over the tiller which stuck out
across my bamboo staging, and went and curled himself up, falling
sound asleep among the crew in less time than it takes to write. On
the other nights we spent on this voyage I had no need to offer to
steer; he handed over charge to me as a matter of course, and as I
prefer night to day in Africa, I enjoyed it. Indeed, much as I have
enjoyed life in Africa, I do not think I ever enjoyed it to the full
as I did on those nights dropping down the Rembwe. The great,
black, winding river with a pathway in its midst of frosted silver
where the moonlight struck it: on each side the ink-black mangrove
walls, and above them the band of star and moonlit heavens that the
walls of mangrove allowed one to see. Forward rose the form of our
sail, idealised from bed-sheetdom to glory; and the little red glow
of our cooking fire gave a single note of warm colour to the cold
light of the moon. Three or four times during the second night,
while I was steering along by the south bank, I found the mangrove
wall thinner, and standing up, looked through the network of their
roots and stems on to what seemed like plains, acres upon acres in
extent, of polished silver - more specimens of those awful slime
lagoons, one of which, before we reached Ndorko, had so very nearly
collected me.
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