Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/414

 had promised No. 67, and were faithful to him. At first, he was one to a hundred, but as we neared the landing, his three companions came to his assistance, and we were finally able to go aboard No. 67. I sat in the stern, and handled the tiller-ropes, and the ride out to the ship was cool and enjoyable Arriving at the ship, we found it surrounded with freight barges, and loading in furious progress. Eight steam winches were at work, four forward and four aft, and hundreds of screaming natives were swarming over the barges and down in the hold where the freight was being stored. A man who lives in this part of the world, and is familiar with it, says that when the natives are talking, they are at work; when they are quiet, he stirs them up with a stick, for he knows they are loafing. The loading on the forward deck was not ten feet from my cabin, and the quartermaster assured me it would go on all night. At 10: 30 there was a short rest, and the native workers swarmed up from below, and over from the barges, to be fed. The crew cook gave them pans of either rice or corn-meal mush, I could not tell which, and the men sat around in groups, and ate it with their fingers. The deck passengers, who have comfortable quarters over the hatchway when we are at sea, scatter everywhere when the hatches are uncovered, and loading is in progress I was much interested in a negro man who had two wives. The women had little babies of about the same age, and the husband seemed as fond of one wife as of the other. The husband was a young man, perhaps twenty-five, and his wives were still younger. The black babies were much better behaved than the white ones