Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/280

 muzzle nestling against my left ear. A minute afterwards we strike a bank, and bang goes off the gun, deafening me, singeing my hair and the side of my face slightly. Fortunately the two men in front are at the moment in the recumbent position attributive to the shock of the canoe jarring against the cliff edge of a bank, or they would have had a miscellaneous collection of bits of broken iron pots and lumps of lead frisking among their vitals. It is a little difficult to make out how much credit Providence really deserves in this affair, but a good deal. Of course if It had taken the trouble to keep us off the bank, or to remind Gray Shirt to uncock his weapon, the thing would not have happened at all, but preliminary precaution is not Providence's peculiarity. Still, when the thing happened It certainly rose to it. I might have had the back of my head blown out, and the men might have been killed. I only hope this won't confirm Pagan permanently into superstition; for only a few minutes before, he had been showing me a big charm to keep him from being hurt by a gun. If he thinks about it, he will see there is nothing in the charm, because the other man who equally escaped was a charmless Christian.

The river into which we ran zig-zags about, and then takes a course S.S.E. It is studded with islands slightly higher than those we have passed, and thinly clad with forest. The place seems alive with birds; flocks of pelican and crane rise up before us out of the grass, and every now and then a crocodile slides off the bank into the water. Wonderfully like old logs they look, particularly when you see one letting himself roll and float down on the current. In spite of these interests I began to wonder where in this lonely land we were to sleep to-night. In front of us were miles of distant mountains, but in no direction the slightest sign of human habitation. Soon we passed out of our channel into a lovely, strangely melancholy, lonely-looking lake—Lake Ncovi, my friends tell me. It is exceedingly beautiful. The rich golden sunlight of the late afternoon soon followed by the short-lived, glorious flushes of colour of the sunset and the after-glow, play over the scene as we paddle across the lake to the N.N.E.—our canoe leaving a long trail of frosted silver behind her as she glides over the mirror-like