Captain Johnson's Attire Calls For Especial Comment And Admiration.
However Disconnected The Two Sides Of His Character Might Be, His
Clothes Bore The Impress Of Both Of His Natures To Perfection.
He
wore, when first we met, a huge sombrero hat, a spotless singlet,
and a suit of clean, well-
Got-up dungaree, and an uncommonly
picturesque, powerful figure he cut in them, with his finely
moulded, well-knit form and good-looking face, full of expression
always, but always with the keen small eyes in it watching the
effect his genial smiles and hearty laugh produced. The eyes were
the eyes of Obanjo, the rest of the face the property of Captain
Johnson. I do not mean to say that they were the eyes of a bad bold
man, but you had not to look twice at them to see they belonged to a
man courageous in the African manner, full of energy and resource,
keenly intelligent and self-reliant, and all that sort of thing.
I left him and the refined Mr. Glass together to talk over the
palaver of shipping me, and they talked it at great length. Finally
the price I was to pay Obanjo was settled and we proceeded to less
important details. It seemed Obanjo, when up the river this time,
had set about constructing a new and large trading canoe at one of
his homes, in which he was just thinking of taking his goods down to
Gaboon. Next morning Obanjo with his vessel turned up, and saying
farewell to my kind host, Mr. Sanga Glass, I departed.
She had the makings of a fine vessel in her; though roughly hewn out
of an immense hard-wood tree: her lines were good, and her type was
that of the big sea-canoes of the Bight of Panavia. Very far
forward was a pole mast, roughly made, but European in intention,
and carrying a long gaff. Shrouds and stays it had not, and my
impression was that it would be carried away if we dropped in for
half a tornado, until I saw our sail and recognised that that would
go to darning cotton instantly if it fell in with even a breeze. It
was a bed quilt that had evidently been in the family some years,
and although it had been in places carefully patched with pieces of
previous sets of the captain's dungarees, in other places, where it
had not, it gave "free passage to the airs of Heaven"; which I may
remark does not make for speed in the boat mounting such canvas.
Partly to this sail, partly to the amount of trading affairs we
attended to, do I owe the credit of having made a record trip down
the Rembwe, the slowest white man time on record.
Fixed across the stern of the canoe there was the usual staging made
of bamboos, flush with the gunwale. Now this sort of staging is an
exceedingly good idea when it is fully finished. You can stuff no
end of things under it; and over it there is erected a hood of palm-
thatch, giving a very comfortable cabin five or six feet long and
about three feet high in the centre, and you can curl yourself up in
it and, if you please, have a mat hung across the opening. But we
had not got so far as that yet on our vessel, only just got the
staging fixed in fact; and I assure you a bamboo staging is but a
precarious perch when in this stage of formation. I made myself a
reclining couch on it in the Roman manner with my various
belongings, and was exceeding comfortable until we got nearly out of
the Rembwe into the Gaboon. Then came grand times. Our noble craft
had by this time got a good list on her from our collected cargo -
ill stowed. This made my home, the bamboo staging, about as
reposeful a place as the slope of a writing desk would be if well
polished; and the rough and choppy sea gave our vessel the most
peculiar set of motions imaginable. She rolled, which made it
precarious for things on the bamboo staging, but still a legitimate
motion, natural and foreseeable. In addition to this, she had a
cataclysmic kick in her - that I think the heathenish thing meant to
be a pitch - which no mortal being could foresee or provide against,
and which projected portable property into the waters of the Gaboon
over the stern and on to the conglomerate collection in the bottom
of the canoe itself, making Obanjo repeat, with ferocity and
feeling, words he had heard years ago, when he was boatswain on a
steamboat trading on the Coast. It was fortunate, you will please
understand, for my future, that I have usually been on vessels of
the British African or the African lines when voyaging about this
West African sea-board, as the owners of these vessels prohibit the
use of bad language on board, or goodness only knows what words I
might not have remembered and used in the Gaboon estuary.
We left Agonjo with as much bustle and shouting and general air of
brisk seamanship as Obanjo could impart to the affair, and the
hopeful mind might have expected to reach somewhere important by
nightfall. I did not expect that; neither, on the other hand, did I
expect that after we had gone a mile and only four, as the early
ballad would say, that we should pull up and anchor against a small
village for the night; but this we did, the captain going ashore to
see for cargo, and to get some more crew.
There were grand times ashore that night, and the captain returned
on board about 2 A.M. with some rubber and pissava and two new hands
whose appearance fitted them to join our vessel; for a more
villainous-looking set than our crew I never laid eye on.
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