Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/468

 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