Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII
FROM CORISCO TO GABOON
August 8th, 1895.—Weather still very rough, the two mile spit of rock running seawards from Alondo Point is a white stretch of flying foam, and the roar and thunder of it shakes the rocky cliff on which the house stands. Mr. Ibea thinks, however, that we should make Cape Esterias by nightfall, presumably because we are all sober; for he tells me an enlivening tale of how he "started from Corisco, on just such a day as this," in a boat commanded and owned by a native, who was drunk at starting and became more so. In addition to himself and this disreputable person, there were some women, and a crew of four or five men. "Shortly," says Mr. Ibea, "we were upset and I had to swim about and put them all back into the boat again. I had not got them in half-an-hour before he got the boat over again, and I again had to fetch them out of the water." Mr. Ibea is a magnificent swimmer, and a fine dashing sailor, and I wish he were coming with me instead of Eveke, and would leave Eveke to look after pastoral matters; but this I know is not possible, and it may be worse to-morrow, so I'm off, and shall spend my time keeping the Lafayette from being upset, for I cannot swim round like ten Newfoundland story-book dogs, or one Mr. Ibea, gathering people from the South Atlantic waves and replacing them on board her, or any vessel. So I take a grateful farewell of Mrs. Ibea and the family at large. Mr. Ibea and his younger son, who is bubbling out conversation in Benga, as he has ever been doing since I came to the island, come with me a little way, and then we part.
I notice that the sea is rough, and the lagoons behind the beaches stink worse even than usual: no wonder the mission found it as unhealthy here as on the mainland! The fine sand blows in the wind, stinging my face—in fact it is bad weather, but I have had enough of walking to and fro along this sandy beach, while Eveke courts his mother-in-law elect, and, in order to get more time to do so, tries to frighten me about the weather.
Arrived at Nassau Bay and have the usual job of hunting out Eveke and the crew from the village, and the usual delays. We wait for the turn of the tide on Eveke's advice. It would, I am sure, have been better to have gone out before the slack, so as to have had the full tide for Esterias, but I let him have his way and wait patiently in the wooden, European-fashion built house which I learn belongs to Eveke's uncle. It does not give one the idea of being much lived in.
It is fairly clean, the walls inside are painted white, with the door and window-frames a bright cobalt blue. Cobalt blue, by the bye, seems a great feature on this island. I wonder whether a cargo of it was ever washed ashore from a wreck, or whether it is a special line of goods for "paying off" in? One rarely sees any other coloured paint. There is one other little village I have been passing through daily since I have been here, that has each house door painted with it and white paint in stripes, diagonal bands, straight bands, plain and chess-board patterns, till it's as good as names and numbers to that village. It would be far and away better for postmen and diners-out than a plan in vogue in a far away London suburb I know of, wherein the christening of the villas seems to have been done by a gardener, giving the more ordinary individual gay times for the houses are named after trees, and which particular shrub your friend lives at often slips down a hole in your memory, when you find yourself confronted by the front gates of "the Bays," "Lilacs," "Elms," "Oaks," "Laburnums," &c. This house of Eveke's uncle wants no name or number to distinguish it from the neighbouring bamboo huts,—you couldn't miss it in a London fog, for were you once to get into the village street, you would be bound to run up against it, as it stands right across the top.
It is considerately furnished inside. In the room in which I await the tide turn there are two chests of drawers, a real dining table, nine chairs, another table, three looking-glasses and a big wooden bedstead of the native type—a wooden bench without sides, but with a head and foot-board; one usually sees this sort of bedstead basking in the sun in the street. There are four I see now at it in the broad village street below me, to the end of compelling the surplus parasitic population to leave. On the one in this room lies a heap of muddled dirty clothes, giving it an air of being the one thing in the house that is used. The rest seems all "for dandy." On the table, scattered anyhow together, are glass scent-bottles, a hanging-lamp, framed oleographs of English farmyard scenes; and amongst them an old album full of faded photographs, evidently once the valued treasure of some white man who is dead now; for were he living he would never have parted with it, after pasting in against the pictures those little English wild roses and bits of heather and bluebells.
At last Eveke rushes up with one of those spasmodic attacks of activity which he simulates, and which never impose on any one but himself, and we all go aboard. Yesterday I met a lady on the shore who asked me if I would take her to Gaboon. I said, as any skipper would, "delighted, my dear"; and here she is sitting on the top of the cargo with her head just exactly in the proper position to get it bashed in, or knocked off by the boom; and her five bundles, one tin box, a peck of limes and a husband. In fact, things are in such a muddle on board that before we weigh anchor, I decide to stow cargo, as befits the pupil of Captain Murray. No black man can stow cargo. I say so viciously, from my canoe experiences. The Lafayette's "hold" is in a condition that would bleach the hair of any "British African" officer on the Coast, even if he only caught sight of it through a telescope. For it partakes strongly of the arrangement of a rubbish heap; the lady passenger's belongings, mine, the crew's, the deck chair, the bundle of bedding, the boxes of sand for ballast, all together anyhow; and for dunnage, parcels of the men's aguma and neat little packets of salt, done up in plantain leaves tied round with tie-tie; and an untidily made up bundle of yam, pieces whereof have got out of the plantain leaf and evaded the tie-tie, and are now wandering about, mixed up with most things. I think, at first, that Mr. Hudson's clean, tidy, deck-chair is underneath everything; I can just see a corner of it sticking out beneath a box of sand, like Mr. Pecksniff's feelings, or the Princes in the Tower, only it is anything but pillows that are smothering it. On making a spirited rescue of the chair, I find, however, that Dr. Nassau's bedding is the thing that really is in the bilge water. During these operations, I jump forward, on to what I imagine is a lot of the crew's clothes, and "Oh! that's my husband," cries the lady passenger, "you fit to hurt him proper"; he upsets me on to the cargo, and groans a good deal and talks about compensation; but I say "he had come at shipper's own risk," and I have "no liability," so he settles down again. When I have finished stowing cargo we set out to sea—Eveke at the helm. I find I am expected to sit surrounded by a rim of alligator pears and bananas, as though I were some kind of joint garnished for table, instead of a West Coast skipper. The Lafayette having neither cabin nor locker is extremely difficult to keep tidy. There is, unavoidably, an all the coals adrift on deck, half the rails below" look about her, do what one will. I stow the pears in under the end strut, where there is a hole with an ornamental woodwork flourish round it, but no door; so those charming fruit will persist in coming larking out again as soon as ever I have got them in. "Oh, it's a dog's life, is the sea, for a man," as my sailor friends say. Eveke meanwhile takes us out of Nassau Bay through Baña Bank and then goes to sleep and I take charge. My lady passenger is quite the lady passenger, frightened of the sea, and dissatisfied with the accommodation. I have stowed her with every care in the bottom of the boat, on the bedding athwart-ships, and she is grateful for the attention; but says "the vessel is not big enough," and goes on eating excruciatingly sour limes in a way that sets my teeth on edge. Half her sufferings arise from her disastrous habit of falling asleep; and then her head goes flump off the seat she is leaning it against, and crack against the ribs of the boat's side; I put my leather photograph case in her usual striking place, but she dodges it in her descent seven times in ten.
The sea is running high, and all the afternoon we beat up and tack, and the Lafayette has a larky way, giving herself the airs of a duck washing itself, putting her head down and shaking the water out over her stern; a good deal of water comes on board one way and another, over one side on one tack, over the other side on the other tack, over the bows always. The man with the whiskers is a smart seaman, and the only one worth his salt, and he attends to the jib; the others sleep and eat and talk and attend to the jiggers in their feet, which they have picked up on Corisco, where they swarm.
The weather is a bit thick, so we do not sight the continent until four o'clock, and it is borne in on me that there's no Cape Esterias for us to-night. Eveke pilots us close in towards the shore, and we run among the long line of rollers, attributive to the great rock reefs that fringe it, and which run out to sea in an irregular cone shape, stretching true north and north-north-east from the blunt headland that has for its north-west extremity Akanda point and for its southern, Cape Clara. Cape Esterias runs out further seaward than Akanda, and is the real south-cast point of Corisco Bay; but from Akanda to Cape Clara (or Joinville) may be taken as the limits of the headland that separates Corisco Bay from the Gaboon Estuary: and the Moondah River mouth is here. "The sun's rim sinks, the stars rush out, at one stride comes the dark" and finds us still lolloping about in the breaking swell. Half an hour after sundown the wind drops, with that suddenness that the breeze, be it light or heavy, always drops alongshore down here, and although we could do little when we had it, as it was nearly in our teeth, we can of course do nothing without it, so we run the Lafayette on to a tongue of sand between rock reefs, that were breathing heavily, just North of Akanda point.
Well do I remember now the time I spent sitting on a deck chair on the deck of the 2,000 ton Rochelle in 1893, with all anxiety as to locality and navigation on the mind of Captain Harrison, while I lazily wondered what it was like ashore here. The stretch of land looked there so desolate and wild: a long line of surf, a long line of dove-coloured sand, a long line of green shrub-brushes, backed by a low, dark forest. We soon lost sight of it on the Rochelle, as she swung out west to give its dangers a wide berth. Little did I think then that I should ever be in circumstances so pre-eminently fitted for acquiring detailed knowledge of the entire phenomena, surf, rocks, sand, beach and all, as I am at present in. We lower our gaff and anchor as hard as we can, and then, leaving two men in the boat and the lady passenger; the rest of us jump over the side into the surf, and wade ashore to stretch our limbs and pick up firewood. We do not stay long, because we are afraid of the Lafayette dragging her anchors. Don't mention it, pray, in "British African" circles; but as we back her stern-foremost on to the sand, we want a hand-line for soundings to find a suitable sand tongue to settle on. I give Whiskers my fishing-line; its lead sinker does very well, only you see we haven't time to take off the line of fish hooks, and, so when he, in proper style, swings the lead to take a cast, those hooks just hitch in the cargo. I cut them adrift with a jack knife with commendable promptitude, Eveke meanwhile handles the sail and I, when danger becomes imminent, energetically take soundings over the stern with my umbrella. It is magnificent, but not navigation, still it works well.
We wade back to the Lafayette, clamber on board, and start to get our supper in the dark, for by now the last light has died out of the sky, and artificial light we have none. Unfortunately I have packed my eatables in my collecting box, so attempt to eat a very interesting dead-wood fungus in lieu of biscuit. Giving this up, I decide to confine my attention to my one surviving tin, the opening of which costs me skin and blood. I am not surprised, but grieved, to find that after all it contains only vegetables for putting into soups, because I have had experience with this species of tinned product before. This particular tin is one of the consignment so kindly sent by Mr. Hudson my rescue on the Ogowé, 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 lagoons 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 upon the sand, and sending out long white arms or feelers towards the surf and then drawing them back as if it were some spirit-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 an 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 of 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 it; if it were not, just melting away into the sheet of mist that lay sleeping on the broad river itself. Now and again you will see it in the forest stretch up a gradually lengthening arm, and wind it lazily round and round some grand column of a tree-stem, to the height of ten or twenty feet from the ground, spread out its top like a plume and then fall back again to the mist-river from which it came. It has weird ways, this mist of the West Coast. I have often, when no one has been near to form opinions of my frivolity, played with it, scooping it up in my hands and letting it fall again, or swished it about with a branch, when it lay at a decent level of three or four feet from the ground. When it comes higher and utterly befogs you, you don't feel much inclination to play with it. The worst of it is, you never quite know how high it is coming. I have seen it rise out of Bimbia flats and cover the Great Cameroon as though it said, "Ah you are Grand Mungo, but I am grander—I am Death."
I drop off to sleep now and then, only to be aroused either by the Lafayette having dragged her anchor and got off skylarking with a lot of rough rocks so that she must be rescued and re-anchored, or by ejaculations from under the sail because of that ram. The tent amidships would afford a series of fine studies for any one who wanted to illustrate anything à la Doré; it looks like a great grave-cloth spread over a tumbled heap of corpses, which vaguely show their outlines through its heavy white folds. When my crew do a good writhe they are particularly fine. My attention gets riveted on them because one of them has an abominable quavering, hysterical, falsetto snore, which, as I want to go to sleep myself, rouses in my mind a desire to slay the performer, for that snore cuts through the sound of the surf on to my nerves like a knife. Three times during the night I arose, and grasping the stump of a plantain bunch and walking along the thwarts, hovered, like a revengeful fiend, over the shrouded sleepers, hesitating for a few minutes to locate the seat of the disorder, for I used all suitable care and precaution to avoid hitting the innocent, but this is difficult, for the snore seems to come from underneath the upper layer, whose heads show through the sail like plums through a pie-crust, so I am regretfully compelled to take swipes at the excrescence nearest the source of the nuisance. This remedy is only a temporary one, but during the lull it produces I fall asleep, after the third application firmly, and do not wake up until the scratching of the crew to extricate itself from under the sail arouses me, and I then find my head under the seat and my unlucky body bent wherever nature had omitted to provide a joint. I have to get up and undo the sail, for I had tied the ends of it securely together to bottle up some of the noise last time the snore aroused me.
August 10th.—The morning breaks gray, cheerless and chilly, the sea looks angry and wicked. For half-an-hour, while the crew are getting things straight, I comb my tangled hair and meditate on the problem "Why did I come to Africa?" This done we heave up anchor and shove off at about 5.30 A.M. and from that time till 1.45 go along near in-shore on the land breeze, among the rollers. I do not cite this as the proper course to lay, but give it as an example of the impossibility of getting a black crew to run out of smell of land; they always like to hug the shore, as not only my own experiences but those of sympathetic friends with whom I have interchanged experiences demonstrate. Let the shore be what it may they cling to it. Poor Mr. S., going from Gaboon to Eloby, got run well up the Moondah River on one occasion, owing to this persistent habit, and other adventurers have fared no better.
The shore along from Akanda to Cape Clara is one to which any white seaman would give a lot of room. Immediately south of our anchorage it begins to rise into dwarf vertical cliffs overhung by bush and trailing plants between which the cliff-face shows strange-looking slabs of white clay and rock. The sea plays furiously against them at high tide, and at low leaves a very narrow beach heavily strewn with immense rock boulders. By 1.30 we find we cannot get round Cape Esterias, so run in under the shallow lea of its northern side. There is here a narrow sand-beach, with plenty of rock on it, and a semi-vertical and supremely slippery path leading up to an ostentatiously European plank-built house. We fix up the Lafayette safely and all go ashore.
The inhabitants of this country have been watching us beating in, and taking a kindly interest in the performance, and so as soon as everything is all right they sing out in a chorus Mboloani. They did not do so before because it is not etiquette to distract people when they are engaged in the crucial occupation of landing a boat or canoe. I am taken possession of by a very comely-looking brown young lady, gracefully attired in my favourite coloured cloth, bright pink with a cardinal twill hem round it, and we go up the hill together. I note that she wears a tight rope of large green and white beads round her beautiful throat; she tells me her name is Agnes and that she is a subtrader for Messrs. Holt's factory at Eloby, and I find, thanks be! she talks fluent trade English, and further that on account of its European planks the ostentatious house is regarded by these kindly people as ipso facto my fit and proper dwelling for the time I may think good to stay at Cape Esterias. Its enterprising builder and owner apologises for its unfinished state; indeed, when at close quarters with it, I see it has merely got its walls up and its roof on. It is perched some four feet above the ground, on poles, and the owner has not yet decided what flight of stairs he will erect to the verandah. He has purchased an old ready-made flight, and has himself constructed a bamboo ladder, its cross pieces tied on to the uprights, I need hardly say, with tie-tie. This being done he has got both ladders lying on the ground beside each other, while he thinks the matter well out as to their respective advantages. Of course the additional fluster of my unexpected arrival renders him more than ever incapable of coming to a decision on their rival merits. I relieve his mind by ignoring them and swing up on to the verandah and enter the house. The furniture consists of shavings, tools, the skeleton of a native bedstead, and a bag of something which evidently serves as a bed. The owner proudly displays the charms of the establishment; he intends, he remarks, to paint the inside of the walls white, with the door and window frames a bright blue. . . . I recognise the good old cobalt in a pot. I applaud the idea, not that it is new on this Coast, but it is better than all white, or dunduckety mud-colour paint, the only other colour schemes in vogue for domestic decoration, and worlds an' away ahead of varnish, which acts as a "catch 'em alive oh" for all manner of insects, and your clothes when you hang them against it. I note there will be a heavy percentage of blue here, because in the fifteen feet square living room there are three doors and two windows—each one of which, from a determination to be quite the white man, is fitted with a lock and a bolt. The next room, there are only two, is particularly strong in windows, being provided with three. Out of the two to the north there is a lovely view of wooded valleys and low hills seen across that charming bright foreground of a banana plantation. The window to the east commands the line of back arrangements of one side of the little village, a view full of interest to the ethnologist, only just at present I am too wet and tired for the soulful contemplation of science, or of scenic beauty, so I close all three windows up with their wooden shutters,—glass, of course, there is none—and having got my portmanteau, and a pudding basin of European origin—with a lively combination of blue, maroon, and gas greens all over it—full of water and, joy! a towel from Agnes, I proceed to wash and dress in the dark. I hear, meanwhile, great uproar in the next room; the entire settlement seems to be doing things and talking about it! On re-entering the other apartment I find one kindly native has lent me a four-legged table, and another an ivory bundle chair, and the population of Cape Esterias has been enterprisingly employed in hauling and hoisting the furniture on to the stairless verandah and into the house, or standing by and giving advice as to how this was to be done. Agnes also adds a slip of new calico for a table cloth, and I am exceedingly grateful, but, Allah! how stiff and bruised and tired! So after having some food and a cup of sugarless and milkless coffee, I excuse myself and go and lie down on the most luxurious bed, that bag of old salt sack stuff, filled with sweating sea-weed, just a bit over-populated, perhaps, with fleas, but very enjoyable, on the plank floor.
It is 5 o'clock when I awake, and I am still thirsty; not liking to bother Agnes for more coffee and being mortal frightened of raw water, I ask her for a "paw-paw." She gets me some unripe ones, explaining "that those nasty boys done gone chop all them ripe one"—such is the universal nature of boys! I regretfully decline the hard fruit, and as they attract quantities of ants I say, "Agnes, just throw them away." "What you mean?" says my charmer. "Put 'em outside," say I. She gazes blankly, "Chuck 'em," says I, descending still further in my language. A gleam of comprehension comes to Agnes. "You mean I hev them?" says she. "That's it, heave them," I answer, and she forthwith "hev 'em" out of one of our many windows. I feel it is my duty to go and pay my respects to the Mission; Agnes quite agrees, and off we go among the scattered bamboo-built houses, one of which in a skeleton state she tells me she is building for herself.
The Roman Catholic Mission, the only representative of white men here, is on the southern face of Cape Esterias. Its buildings consist of a small residence and a large church. The church has a concrete floor and wooden benches, the white walls relieved by a frieze of framed prints of a religious character, a pretty altar with its array of bright brass candlesticks, and above it the tinted and gilt figure of the Virgin and Child. Every part of the place is sweet and clean, giving evidence of the loving care with which it is tended. As I pass the residence, the missionary, seeing me, sends one of his black retainers to fetch me in, and leads me on to the verandah, where I am most cordially received by the Père in charge, who has practical views on hospitality, and is anxious for me to have wine and many things else he can ill afford to spare from his own store. I thankfully confine my depredations to some sugar and a loaf of excellent bread, but he insists on handing to Agnes for me a tin of beef and a lot of oranges. As I cannot speak French, nor he English, I do my best to convey my sense of his kindness and bow myself off.
Agnes, who is very proud of the Mission, tells me there is only one Père and one Frère stationed here, but she says "they are very good—good too much." They educate the children, teaching them to read French, &c., and should a child display any aptitude it is forwarded round to Gaboon to acquire a further training in the technical schools there in connection with the headquarters of the Mission. She herself, I gather, was educated primarily by the Mission, but she has continued her studies on her own account, for not only does she speak French grammatically, as the natives are taught to, and read and write it, but also English—Coast English no doubt, but comforting to the wanderer who falls in with her, while she claims an equal knowledge of Spanish; no mean range of accomplishments for a lady. I return to my abode and have a square meal and sugar in my coffee, thanks to the missionary, and so to bed, as Mr. Pepys would say. I am sure, by the way, Mr. Pepys would like Agnes, she is quite his style of beauty, plump and pleasant; I don't expect he would care for my seaweed bed though, unless he had been broken into it by African travel, for Mr. Pepys had great ideas of being comfortable in a conventional way.
August 11th—Agnes rouses me from my thalassic couch and suggests Mass at 5.30 A.M. It seems a very proper suggestion, so I carry it out. I find the rest of the inhabitants already on their knees in the church, singing their Salve Maria responses in that musical, metallic twang the Latin seems to bring out so strangely in the African voice, usually so full and throaty. I endeavour to follow properly, and when my whole attention is absorbed in so doing, a terrific tug at my skirts alarms me, I look carefully round and see Agnes on her knees behind me. "What's the matter?" I ask. She whispers something. "Salve Maria," I say, joining the congregational chorus hastily, and add in a whisper "I no fit to hear you, speak them thing softly, softly,"—she then emits a hissing whisper, full of earnest meaning but incomprehensible as to detail; "Salve Maria" comes again and I, feeling frightened that I am doing something awfully wrong somehow, answer anxiously "What?" and then right out loud and clear, Agnes says, "I be his Jack wash." "Salve Maria," say I, with the congregation. Then we have an explanation outside, and it seems she does his reverence's washing, and feeling, justly enough, proud of the white lace petticoats which he was displaying before the altar she was compelled to communicate the fact to me and claim her share in their beauty. Vanity, thy name is Woman!
I take leave of Agnes with gifts, and of my host, the owner of the house, giving him a present. He is more than satisfied, but explains this must be regarded as a gift and not as pay for the hire of his house—it not being the fashion of his country to take this from a traveller. While waiting about for the Lafayette to get ready for sea, i.e., for the water bottles to be refilled, I learn the cause of the weird howls and screams I have heard during the night. A poor maniac who has run from Gaboon to Cape Esterias haunts the rocky narrow beach at night and flies from any one who approaches him to give him food, or offer him shelter. He soon returns and hangs about near the houses again and runs at night along the beach screaming and moaning as he jumps about among the rocks. When I get on to the beach he is sitting playing on a rock, not far off, tearing up a plantain leaf into shreds. I take up some packages of aguma and biscuits, and softly and cautiously make my way towards him, but he just lets me get within a few yards and then is off with a howl, at a pace which, if it holds, must by now have landed him on the shores of Victoria Nyanza. In addition to this fortuitous lunatic, there is at Cape Esterias a local one, quite the biggest black man I have ever seen; he must be little short of seven feet high, and his muscular development is such that he looks very heavily built for his height. They tell me he is a slave who was brought in his youth, like most Benga slaves, from one of the Fernan Vaz tribes, and is quite harmless and hard-working, but quite mad, "some witch has stolen one of his souls." I have seen it stated that insanity is almost unknown among the Africans; I can truly say I have never stayed any time in a district among them without coming across several cases of it. In the Rivers, indeed among all the true negro tribes, it is customary to kill lunatics off. On the South-West Coast insanity usually takes the form of malignant melancholy and they kill themselves off. Amongst the Kacongo and Bas-congo tribes, this suicide is at times almost an epidemnic, and it is there customary when a man shows symptoms of its coming on by hanging himself, without rhyme or reason, about the place or by trying to knock his brains out against a post, for a family conclave to be held. The utter folly of his proceedings are then pointed out to him by his relations, as only relations can point it out, and should he after this still persist in attempting to kill himself, spoiling things, and disturbing people, the job is taken off his hands and his relations club him on the head, and throw the body in the river, so "palaver done set." These Benga and M'pongwe people seem just to let lunatics alone, though to their credit be it said they had tried to feed this poor fellow from Gaboon, because, they said, they feared he would starve. When lunatics are dangerous they secure them to trees by a chain. There was one, I am told, chained near Glass a long time, but one night he broke loose and was never heard of again.
I should say my lady passenger left here. I fancy she had had enough of the Lafayette. She said she "would walk the rest of the way," which may be translated into she'd write to Mr. A. L. Jones. We get out through the breakers and hoist our mainsail and beat along among the rollers, rolling ourselves like mad as the heavy waves sweep broadside on under us. Just off the Cape itself we have to run almost out of smell of land, to get round a rock reef; I am bound to confess the consequences of this spirited display of seamanship are not encouraging. A terrific marine phenomenon exhibits itself suddenly off our weather bow, at a distance of fifteen to twenty feet. My first opinion is that it is the blow-up of a submarine volcano, not because I am a specialist in marine volcanic methods, having never seen one out of a picture-book, but this is very like the picture-book, waves and foam and flying water. In another second it explains itself completely, for out of the centre of it springs aloft the immense fluke of a great whale, as high as our mainmast. It swings round with a flourish and then comes flop down on to and into the broken sea, sending sheets of water over us and into the boat. We bale hard all, and stand by for another performance, but, to my intense relief, we see the whale blow a few minutes later a good distance off, and then have another flourish—a most charming spectacle on the horizon. My crew then say, as they take the baling easier, it is a common affair in Corisco Bay just about now, for it is the courting time for whales. I don't come again into Corisco Bay in canoes or small craft while any of that wretched foolishness is going on. They also tell me that the other day four people coming from Cape Esterias to Gaboon in a canoe were drowned, all hands, and they think they must have fallen in with this whale; certainly if a small canoe had been as close as we were it would have had a bad time of it, for with us the mainsail protected us from a lot of water coming on board. Goodness knows, however, we had enough, and did some brilliant baling.
Rounding the reef we run inshore again, and beat up to Cape Clara, the shore showing the same type of dwarf cliff and forest on top. Here and there a village shows, some of them Fans who have arrived in the easterly end of their migration and are, according to my crew, making by no means good preparations for their eternal one.
On going round Cape Clara, to my joy we see the Grand Estuary of Gaboon running inland before us, and the wind being favourable, we run up it in grand style, looking, I am sure, quite the well-handled racer. But "short is human glory, vain the vanity of man," our true nature shows up again soon in the way we approach the stately Minerve, the guardship, to pass our papers. I hand over to Eveke, making it a rule, since I placed my bowsprit into a conservatory and took the paint off one side of a small-pox hospital, not to keep charge when approaching valuable objects. Eveke promptly lowers the gaff, dropping the mainsail completely over me, and hastily getting out our oars, we avoid a collision and hook on to her ladder. A frantic conversation is already going on between my crew and the authorities before I extricate myself. It is a difficult thing to get anything like gracefully and amiably from under a wet mainsail, but my prophetic soul tells me we are in disgrace, so I do my best and beam upon an officer, who is at the bottom of the ladder, asking leading questions about the health of Corisco, and demanding the official bill of the same. Eveke is much alarmed, for I tell him we shall get quarantined; and he ought to have seen about this, and at last by means of the feeble French of one of our crew, we demonstrate to the officer that bills of health simply can't be got on Corisco, there being no Spanish official on the forsaken island to issue them. The official is unconvinced and goes up the ladder to see other officers about it. The interval of suspense I employ in blowing up Eveke, and he in attempting to exculpate himself and inculpate Dr. Nassau for not having told him one was necessary. However, in a few minutes down the ladder comes the doctor, saying that a merciful view has been taken of the case, only we must not do it again. I solemnly assure him I will not; nor will I, for it's not my present intention to revisit an island that has only mud-fish in its lakes and courting whales in its encircling seas. While we have been busy over this affair, the lively Lafayette has been availing herself, as usual when my eye is off her, of the opportunity to get into mischief and bring down disgrace and derision upon her captain and crew; this time by jamming her topmast, with a nice, clean, new French flag on it, up the tap of a cistern—a most unseamanlike proceeding, and one which the instruction I have received from Captain Murray and Professor Roy—instruction, I am aware, I do small credit to—gives me no hints as to the proper way of dealing with, so we have to be ignominously extricated by the Minerve's crew, who roar at us, as we shove off, drifting, waddling and wobbling away, until we get our mainsail up again.
As the manœuvre of placing your main-top up a tap is not mentioned, even in my friend The Sailor's Sea Book I had better explain how the thing is done. The Minerve is an old line-of-battle ship, moored off Libreville to serve as a guard ship, a depot, and a hospital. She is by nature high out of water, on her gun deck is the hospital, on the main deck the officers' quarters and the exercise ground for the sailors and marines, and above this again is another structure with cisterns on, their taps projecting overside—why I do not know, unless they screw hose on them, for I have never been aboard her or had her geography explained; above all is a roof of palm-leaf mats, in good old Coast style. The whole fabric, as Clark Russell would say, towers high into the air, just high enough about the cisterns for the lively Lafayette to get her precious spar up the nozzle of one of those taps, and of course it was a joke she could not resist trying on. I wish it clearly to be understood that I am not saying a syllable against the staid, stately Minerve. The only indiscretion she was ever guilty of was once leaving her moorings and going off with a heavy tornado, to the horror of Glass and Libreville, drifting away, hospital and all, to what seemed destruction. She was rescued, but what the feelings of those on board were, save that they had a lurid glow of glory in them and a determination that they would die in a manner creditable to La France, I know not. The feelings of those ashore I am faintly able to realise, and they must have been painful in the extreme, for the Minerve is beloved; many a man, nay, almost every man, knows that he owes his life to the skill and care he received on board her when he had "that attack." No man. is, I think, regarded as being initiated into the inner life of Congo Français until he has been carried on board her in a dying condition from the fearful Coast fever, and duly pulled round. It would be an immense advantage to the other settlements along here had they such an institution. She is infinitely better than the so-called "Sanatorium" on higher ground. The idea of the efficacy of such stations is one of the most dangerous illusions rife on the West Coast—I even learn now that this Government is thinking of doing away with the floating hospital and building one ashore which will not have anything like so good a record to show as the wards of the Minerve now have.
After our incident with the authorities we pull ourselves together, and arrive at Hatton and Cookson's Wharf with a delusive dash, and glad I am to get there and return to all the comforts, society, and safety associated with it.