The Best Form Of Knife Is
The Bowie, With A Shallow Half Moon Cut Out Of The Back At The Point
End, And This Depression Sharpened To A Cutting Edge.
A knife is
essential, because after wading neck deep in a swamp your revolver
is neither use nor ornament until you have had time to clean it.
But the chances are you may go across Africa, or live years in it,
and require neither.
It is just the case of the gentleman who asked
if one required a revolver in Carolina and was answered, "You may be
here one year, and you may be here two and never want it; but when
you do want it you'll want it very bad."
The cannibalism of the Fans, although a prevalent habit, is no
danger, I think, to white people, except as regards the bother it
gives one in preventing one's black companions from getting eaten.
The Fan is not a cannibal from sacrificial motives like the negro.
He does it in his common sense way. Man's flesh, he says, is good
to eat, very good, and he wishes you would try it. Oh dear no, he
never eats it himself, but the next door town does. He is always
very much abused for eating his relations, but he really does not do
this. He will eat his next door neighbour's relations and sell his
own deceased to his next door neighbour in return; but he does not
buy slaves and fatten them up for his table as some of the Middle
Congo tribes I know of do. He has no slaves, no prisoners of war,
no cemeteries, so you must draw your own conclusions. No, my
friend, I will not tell you any cannibal stories. I have heard how
good M. du Chaillu fared after telling you some beauties, and now
you come away from the Fan village and down the Rembwe river.
CHAPTER XI. DOWN THE REMBWE.
Setting forth how the Voyager descends the Rembwe River, with divers
excursions and alarms, in the company of a black trader, and returns
safely to the Coast.
Getting away from Agonjo seemed as if it would be nearly as
difficult as getting to it, but as the quarters were comfortable and
the society fairly good, I was not anxious. I own the local scenery
was a little too much of the Niger Delta type for perfect beauty,
just the long lines of mangrove, and the muddy river lounging almost
imperceptibly to sea, and nothing else in sight. Mr. Glass,
however, did not take things so philosophically. I was on his
commercial conscience, for I had come in from the bush and there was
money in me. Therefore I was a trade product - a new trade stuff
that ought to be worked up and developed; and he found himself
unable to do this, for although he had secured the first parcel, as
it were, and got it successfully stored, yet he could not ship it,
and he felt this was a reproach to him.
Many were his lamentations that the firm had not provided him with a
large sailing canoe and a suitable crew to deal with this new line
of trade. I did my best to comfort him, pointing out that the most
enterprising firm could not be expected to provide expensive things
like these, on the extremely remote chance of ladies arriving per
bush at Agonjo - in fact not until the trade in them was well
developed. But he refused to see it in this light and harped upon
the subject, wrapped up, poor man, in a great coat and a muffler,
because his ague was on him.
I next tried to convince Mr. Glass that any canoe would do for me to
go down in. "No," he said, "any canoe will not do;" and he
explained that when you got down the Rembwe to 'Como Point you were
in a rough, nasty bit of water, the Gaboon, which has a fine
confused set of currents from the tidal wash and the streams of the
Rembwe and 'Como rivers, in which it would be improbable that a
river canoe could live any time worth mentioning. Progress below
'Como Point by means of mere paddling he considered impossible.
There was nothing for it but a big sailing canoe, and there was no
big sailing canoe to be had. I think Mr. Glass got a ray of comfort
out of the fact that Messrs. John Holt's sub-agent was, equally with
himself, unable to ship me.
At this point in the affair there entered a highly dramatic figure.
He came on to the scene suddenly and with much uproar, in a way that
would have made his fortune in a transpontine drama. I shall always
regret I have not got that man's portrait, for I cannot do him
justice with ink. He dashed up on to the verandah, smote the frail
form of Mr. Glass between the shoulders, and flung his own massive
one into a chair. His name was Obanjo, but he liked it pronounced
Captain Johnson, and his profession was a bush and river trader on
his own account. Every movement of the man was theatrical, and he
used to look covertly at you every now and then to see if he had
produced his impression, which was evidently intended to be that of
a reckless, rollicking skipper. There was a Hallo-my-Hearty
atmosphere coming off him from the top of his hat to the soles of
his feet, like the scent off a flower; but it did not require a
genius in judging men to see that behind, and under this was a very
different sort of man, and if I should ever want to engage in a wild
and awful career up a West African river I shall start on it by
engaging Captain Johnson. He struck me as being one of those men,
of whom I know five, whom I could rely on, that if one of them and I
went into the utter bush together, one of us at least would come out
alive and have made something substantial by the venture; which is a
great deal more than I could say, for example, of Ngouta, who was
still with me, as he desired to see the glories of Gaboon and buy a
hanging lamp.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 96 of 190
Words from 97164 to 98231
of 194943
