Having Grasped This Law, I Crept Along Up River; And,
By Allah!
Before I had gone twenty yards, if that wretch, the
current of the greatest, etc., did not grab hold of the nose of my
canoe, and we teetotummed round again as merrily as ever.
My
audience screamed. I knew what they were saying, "You'll be
drowned! Come back! Come back!" but I heard them and I heeded not.
If you attend to advice in a crisis you're lost; besides, I couldn't
"Come back" just then. However, I got into the slack water again,
by some very showy, high-class steering. Still steering, fine as it
is, is not all you require and hanker after. You want pace as well,
and pace, except when in the clutches of the current, I had not so
far attained. Perchance, thought I, the pace region in a canoe may
be in its centre; so I got along on my knees into the centre to
experiment. Bitter failure; the canoe took to sidling down river
broadside on, like Mr. Winkle's horse. Shouts of laughter from the
bank. Both bow and stern education utterly inapplicable to centre;
and so, seeing I was utterly thrown away there, I crept into the
bows, and in a few more minutes I steered my canoe, perfectly, in
among its fellows by the bank and secured it there. Mme. Forget ran
down to meet me and assured me she had not laughed so much since she
had been in Africa, although she was frightened at the time lest I
should get capsized and drowned. I believe it, for she is a sweet
and gracious lady; and I quite see, as she demonstrated, that the
sight of me, teetotumming about, steering in an elaborate and showy
way all the time, was irresistibly comic. And she gave a most
amusing account of how, when she started looking for me to give me
tea, a charming habit of hers, she could not see me in among my
bottles, and so asked the little black boy where I was. "There,"
said he, pointing to the tree hanging against the rock out in the
river; and she, seeing me hitched with a canoe against the rock, and
knowing the danger and depth of the river, got alarmed.
Well, when I got down to Lembarene I naturally went on with my
canoeing studies, in pursuit of the attainment of pace. Success
crowned my efforts, and I can honestly and truly say that there are
only two things I am proud of - one is that Doctor Gunther has
approved of my fishes, and the other is that I can paddle an Ogowe
canoe. Pace, style, steering and all, "All same for one" as if I
were an Ogowe African. A strange, incongruous pair of things: but
I often wonder what are the things other people are really most
proud of; it would be a quaint and repaying subject for
investigation.
Mme. Jacot gave me every help in canoeing, for she is a remarkably
clear-headed woman, and recognised that, as I was always getting
soaked, anyhow, I ran no extra danger in getting soaked in a canoe;
and then, it being the dry season, there was an immense stretch of
water opposite Andande beach, which was quite shallow. So she saw
no need of my getting drowned.
The sandbanks were showing their yellow heads in all directions when
I came down from Talagouga, and just opposite Andande there was
sticking up out of the water a great, graceful, palm frond. It had
been stuck into the head of the pet sandbank, and every day was
visited by the boys and girls in canoes to see how much longer they
would have to wait for the sandbank's appearance. A few days after
my return it showed, and in two days more there it was, acres and
acres of it, looking like a great, golden carpet spread on the
surface of the centre of the clear water - clear here, down this side
of Lembarene Island, because the river runs fairly quietly, and has
time to deposit its mud. Dark brown the Ogowe flies past the other
side of the island, the main current being deflected that way by a
bend, just below the entrance of the Nguni.
There was great rejoicing. Canoe-load after canoe-load of boys and
girls went to the sandbank, some doing a little fishing round its
rim, others bringing the washing there, all skylarking and singing.
Few prettier sights have I ever seen than those on that sandbank -
the merry brown forms dancing or lying stretched on it: the gaudy-
coloured patchwork quilts and chintz mosquito-bars that have been
washed, spread out drying, looking from Kangwe on the hill above,
like beds of bright flowers. By night when it was moonlight there
would be bands of dancers on it with bush-light torches, gyrating,
intermingling and separating till you could think you were looking
at a dance of stars.
They commenced affairs very early on that sandbank, and they kept
them up very late; and all the time there came from it a soft murmur
of laughter and song. Ah me! if the aim of life were happiness and
pleasure, Africa should send us missionaries instead of our sending
them to her - but, fortunately for the work of the world, happiness
is not. One thing I remember which struck me very much regarding
the sandbank, and this was that Mme. Jacot found such pleasure in
taking her work on to the verandah, where she could see it. I knew
she did not care for the songs and the dancing. One day she said to
me, "It is such a relief." "A relief?" I said. "Yes, do you not
see that until it shows there is nothing but forest, forest, forest,
and that still stretch of river? That bank is the only piece of
clear ground I see in the year, and that only lasts a few weeks
until the wet season comes, and then it goes, and there is nothing
but forest, forest, forest, for another year.
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