Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/458

 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