Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/459

 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