I Had To Unpack My Bottles Of Fishes So As To Equalise
The Weight Of The Loads.
Every load is then made into a sort of
cocoon with bush rope.
I was left in peace at about 11.30 P.M., and clearing off the
clothes from the bench threw myself down and tried to get some
sleep, for we were to start, the Fans said, before dawn. Sleep
impossible - mosquitoes! lice!! - so at 12.40 I got up and slid aside
my bark door. I found Pagan asleep under his mosquito bar outside,
across the doorway, but managed to get past him without rousing him
from his dreams of palaver which he was still talking aloud, and
reconnoitred the town. The inhabitants seemed to have talked
themselves quite out and were sleeping heavily. I went down then to
our canoe and found it safe, high up among the Fan canoes on the
stones, and then I slid a small Fan canoe off, and taking a paddle
from a cluster stuck in the sand, paddled out on to the dark lake.
It was a wonderfully lovely quiet night with no light save that from
the stars. One immense planet shone pre-eminent in the purple sky,
throwing a golden path down on to the still waters. Quantities of
big fish sprung out of the water, their glistening silver-white
scales flashing so that they look like slashing swords. Some bird
was making a long, low boom-booming sound away on the forest shore.
I paddled leisurely across the lake to the shore on the right, and
seeing crawling on the ground some large glow-worms, drove the canoe
on to the bank among some hippo grass, and got out to get them.
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