Ogow6, and I did not feel justified in returning it to store
when I got back to Gaboon, because its little golden label had,
as is usual with those French forms of labels, come off, and after
all, I being an optimistic ass, hoped there might be something
in the tin good to eat. Well there isn’t, and what is worse, I
have nothing to drink, for the Lafayette is too agitated to
allow us to make a fire to boil water for tea. There is plenty
of water in bottles for the men, but unboiled water is my
ibet. There are always little somethings that are not quite
pleasant in African travel.
The lady passenger groans a good deal and eats those
excruciating limes and the biscuits, of which I had given her
a good store in the afternoon, in the hopes of distracting her
from a series of observations she was then making on the
height of Atlantic waves. She soon goes off to sleep as
I hear by the sound of the crack of her head against the ribs
of the boat. In my dual capacity of skipper and stewardess, I
search her head out from amongst a bunch of bananas, an iron
pot and the photograph case, and, eliminating the other factors,
arrange it nicely on the banana bunch and wrap her up completely
in my thick rug and shawl, because she only has on
one thin cloth, and the seas that have come on board have
soaked that through long ago.
The men, after their supper on the provisions I had rescued
from a state of dunnage, light their pipe— I say pipe advisedly,
for they had one, a thing about the size of a young model-
dwelling washing copper. It takes a whole leaf of tobacco
rolled round and placed into it horizontally, with three lucifer
matches broken up and placed in the hole in the middle, and
of course a bit of plantain leaf folded and put on top to
prevent its roaring away too rapidly. They hand it on
from one to the other, while they make their arrangements for
the night. These arrangements consist in placing the main
sail across the boom like a tent, they then creep in under this
and go to sleep on the cargo. They want to erect a tent for
me with the jib, because they say it is very bad to sleep
in the light of the moon which is rising ; but I do not feel
like sleeping, so I refuse. I have no hesitation in saying
that they pass an uneasy night. For one reason, in under
their tent with them is a large ram Mr. Ibea is sending
to Gaboon, and that sheep has scimitar-shaped sharp
horns and restless habits, and I can see he does things that
hurt and rouse the sleepers to groaning-point perpetually,
I sit up by the rudder watching the black heaving ocean, too
rough for the weak moon to brighten save when it flies aloft
in angry white foam and surf over the shoals and rocks ; and
the dimly moonlit sky with the clouds flying in the ever
blowing upper wind from the equator; and the motionless
black line of the forest with the soft white mist rolling low
and creeping and crawling out between its stems from the
lagqons behind the sand-ridged beach. The mist comes stretching
out from under the bushes over the sand towards the sea,
now raising itself up into peaks, now crouching down uponi
the sand, and sending out long white arms or feelers towards
the surf and then drawing them back as if it were some spirits
possessed thing, poisonous and malignant, that wanted to*
reach us, and yet is timorous and frightened of the surf’s
thunder-roar and spray. It gets over its alarm after about arn
hour, however, and comes curling out in a white wall and!
during the rest of the calm before the dawn-wind comes,
wraps itself round us, dankly-smelling like some foul corpse.
I don’t think this sort of mist is healthy, but it is often
supremely lovely and always fascinates me.- I have seen it
play the weirdest wildest tricks many a time, in many a place
in West Africa. I have, when benighted, walked hurriedly
through it for miles in the forest while it has mischievously
hidden the path at my feet from the helpful illumination
of ^ the moon, swishing and swirling round my moving
skirts. I have seen it come out o f the forests and gather
on the creek before and round me when out o’ nights in
canoes, gradually as we glided towards the breeze-swept
river, forming itself into a great ball which has rolled before
us, alongside, or behind us, showing dimly now in the shadow,
ghostly white now in the moonshine, and bursting into
thousands of flakes if the river breeze when it met it was too
strong for i t ; if it were not, just melting away into the sheet o f
mist that lay sleeping on the broad river itself. Nowand again
you will see it in the forest stretch up a gradually lengthening
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