Sprinkled Among Them
Were Bunches Of Pure Stephanotis-Like Flowers, Which Said That The
Gaunt Bush-Ropes Were Rubber Vines That Had Burst Into Flower When
They Had Seen The Sun.
These flowers we came across in nearly every
type of forest all the way, for rubber abounds here.
I will weary you no longer now with the different kinds of forest
and only tell you I have let you off several. The natives have
separate names for seven different kinds, and these might, I think,
be easily run up to nine.
A certain sort of friendship soon arose between the Fans and me. We
each recognised that we belonged to that same section of the human
race with whom it is better to drink than to fight. We knew we
would each have killed the other, if sufficient inducement were
offered, and so we took a certain amount of care that the inducement
should not arise. Gray Shirt and Pagan also, their trade friends,
the Fans treated with an independent sort of courtesy; but Silence,
Singlet, the Passenger, and above all Ngouta, they openly did not
care a row of pins for, and I have small doubt that had it not been
for us other three they would have killed and eaten these very
amiable gentlemen with as much compunction as an English sportsman
would kill as many rabbits. They on their part hated the Fan, and
never lost an opportunity of telling me "these Fan be bad man too
much." I must not forget to mention the other member of our party,
a Fan gentleman with the manners of a duke and the habits of a
dustbin.
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