The Situation Was A Trying One
And The Way The Captain Of The Vessel Kept Dancing About His Deck
Saying
Things in a foreign tongue, but quite comprehensible, was
distracting; but I did not devote myself to giving him the
Information he asked for, as to what PARTICULAR kind of idiot I was,
because he was neither a mad doctor nor an ethnologist and had no
right to the information; but I put a raft on the line of a very
light wood we had a big store of, and this held up the ebony, and
the current carried it down to the steamer all right. Then we
hauled the line home and sent him some more on the patent plan, but,
just to hurry up, you understand, and not delay the ship, a deadly
crime, SOME of that ebony went off in a canoe and all ended happily,
and the Kruboys regarded themselves as having been the spectators of
another manifestation of white intelligence. In defence of the
captain's observations, I must say he could not see me because I was
deploying behind a woodstack; nevertheless, I do not mean to say
this method of shipping ebony is a good one. I shall not try it
again in a hurry, and the situation cannot be pulled through unless
you have, as Allah gave me, a very swift current; and although, when
the thing went well, I DID say things from behind the woodstack to
the captain, I did not feel justified in accepting his apologetic
invitation to come on board and have a drink.
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