thinking of taking his goods down to Gaboon. The only
drawback was this noble vessel was not finished; but
that did not discourage any of us, except Mr. Glass, who
seemed to think the firm would debit me to his account if
I got lost. However, 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 jtornado, until I
saw our sail and recognised that it 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 stag
ing 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 Royal 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 th a t;
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 ca'ptain 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. One enormously powerful fellow looked the
incarnation of the horrid negro of buccaneer stories, and I
admired Obanjo for the way he kept them in hand. We
z