I Communicated My Feelings To My
Pilot, Who Did Not Seem To Understand At First, So I Feared I Should
Have to knock them into him with the paddle; but at last he
understood I wanted to be landed on
The island and duly landed me,
when he seemed much surprised at the reward I gave him in pocket-
handkerchiefs. Then I got a powerful young Igalwa dandy to paddle
me home.
I did not go to the island next day, but down below Fula, watching
the fish playing in the clear water, and the lizards and birds on
the rocky high banks; but on my next journey round to the factories
I got into another and a worse disaster. I went off there early one
morning; and thinking the only trouble lay in getting back up the
Ogowe, and having developed a theory that this might be minimised by
keeping very close to the island bank, I never gave a thought to
dangers attributive to going down river; so, having by now acquired
pace, my canoe shot out beyond the end rocks of the island into the
main stream. It took me a second to realise what had happened, and
another to find out I could not get the canoe out of the current
without upsetting it, and that I could not force her back up the
current, so there was nothing for it but to keep her head straight
now she had bolted. A group of native ladies, who had followed my
proceedings with much interest, shouted observations which I believe
to have been "Come back, come back; you'll be drowned." "Good-bye,
Susannah, don't you weep for me," I courteously retorted; and flew
past them and the factory beaches and things in general, keenly
watching for my chance to run my canoe up a siding, as it were, off
the current main line.
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