He will come down to Dumas' with
Mr. Cockshut and me.
Off we go, and just exactly as we are getting
on to Dumas' beach, off starts the Eclaireur with a shriek for the
Post beach. So I say good-bye to Mr. Cockshut, and go back to the
Post with Dr. Pelessier, and he sees me on board, and to my immense
relief he stays on board a good hour and a half, talking to other
people, so it is not on my head if he is up all night.
June 25th. - Eclaireur has to wait for the Administrator until ten,
because he has not done his mails. At ten he comes on board like an
amiable tornado, for he himself is going to Cape Lopez. I am
grieved to see them carrying on board, too, a French official very
ill with fever. He is the engineer of the canoniere and they are
taking him down to Cape Lopez, where they hope to get a ship to take
him up to Gaboon, and to the hospital on the Minerve. I heard
subsequently that the poor fellow died about forty hours after
leaving Njole at Achyouka in Kama country.
We get away at last, and run rapidly down river, helped by the
terrific current. The Eclaireur has to call at Talagouga for planks
from M. Gacon's sawmill. As soon as we are past the tail of
Talagouga Island, the Eclaireur ties her whistle string to a
stanchion, and goes off into a series of screaming fits, as only she
can. What she wants is to get M. Forget or M. Gacon, or better
still both, out in their canoes with the wood waiting for her,
because "she cannot anchor in the depth," "nor can she turn round,"
and "backing plays the mischief with any ship's engines," and "she
can't hold her own against the current," and - then Captain Verdier
says things I won't repeat, and throws his weight passionately on
the whistle string, for we are in sight of the narrow gorge of
Talagouga, with the Mission Station apparently slumbering in the
sun. This puts the Eclaireur in an awful temper. She goes down
towards it as near as she dare, and then frisks round again, and
runs up river a little way and drops down again, in violent
hysterics the whole time. Soon M. Gacon comes along among the trees
on the bank, and laughs at her. A rope is thrown to him, and the
panting Eclaireur tied up to a tree close in to the bank, for the
water is deep enough here to moor a liner in, only there are a good
many rocks. In a few minutes M. Forget and several canoe loads of
beautiful red-brown mahogany planks are on board, and things being
finished, I say good-bye to the captain, and go off with M. Forget
in a canoe, to the shore.
CHAPTER V. THE RAPIDS OF THE OGOWE.
The Log of an Adooma canoe during a voyage undertaken to the rapids
of the River Ogowe, with some account of the divers disasters that
befell thereon.
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