Behind Us, Gradually Sinking In The
Distance, Is The High Land On Lembarene Island.
Soon we run up alongside a big street of a village with four high
houses rising a story above the rest, which are strictly ground
floor; it has also five or six little low open thatched huts along
the street in front.
{96} These may be fetish huts, or, as the
captain of the Sparrow would say, "again they mayn't." For I have
seen similar huts in the villages round Libreville, which were store
places for roof mats, of which the natives carefully keep a store
dry and ready for emergencies in the way of tornadoes, or to sell.
We stop abreast of this village. Inhabitants in scores rush out and
form an excited row along the vertical bank edge, several of the
more excited individuals falling over it into the water.
Yells from our passengers on the lower deck. Yells from inhabitants
on shore. Yells of vite, vite from the Captain. Dogs bark, horns
bray, some exhilarated individual thumps the village drum, canoes
fly out from the bank towards us. Fearful scrimmage heard going on
all the time on the deck below. As soon as the canoes are
alongside, our passengers from the lower deck, with their bundles
and their dogs, pour over the side into them. Canoes rock wildly
and wobble off rapidly towards the bank, frightening the passengers
because they have got their best clothes on, and fear that the
Eclaireur will start and upset them altogether with her wash.
On reaching the bank, the new arrivals disappear into brown clouds
of wives and relations, and the dogs into fighting clusters of
resident dogs. Happy, happy day! For those men who have gone
ashore have been away on hire to the government and factories for a
year, and are safe home in the bosoms of their families again, and
not only they themselves, but all the goods they have got in pay.
The remaining passengers below still yell to their departed friends;
I know not what they say, but I expect it's the Fan equivalent for
"Mind you write. Take care of yourself. Yes, I'll come and see you
soon," etc., etc. While all this is going on, the Eclaireur quietly
slides down river, with the current, broadside on as if she smelt
her stable at Lembarene. This I find is her constant habit whenever
the captain, the engineer, and the man at the wheel are all busy in
a row along the rail, shouting overside, which occurs whenever we
have passengers to land. Her iniquity being detected when the last
canoe load has left for the shore, she is spun round and sent up
river again at full speed.
We go on up stream; now and again stopping at little villages to
land passengers or at little sub-factories to discharge cargo, until
evening closes in, when we anchor and tie up at O'Saomokita, where
there is a sub-factory of Messrs.
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