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After a gay time in a rock-encumbered forest, growing in a tangled, matted way on a rough hillside, at an angle of 45 degrees, M'bo sighted the gleam of fires through the tree stems away to the left, and we bore down on it, listening to its drum. Viewed through the bars of the tree stems the scene was very picturesque. The village was just a collection of palm mat-built huts, very low and squalid.
The shock being too much for M'bo and Pierre they were driven back on me, who got flattened on to the cargo of bundles which, being now firmly tied in, couldn't spread the confusion further aft; but the shock of the canoe's nose against the rock did so in style, and the rest of the crew fell forward on to the bundles, me, and themselves.
M'bo, I found, had hung up my mosquito-bar over one of the hard wood benches, and going cautiously under it I lit a night- light and read myself asleep with my damp dilapidated old Horace. Woke at 4 A.M. lying on the ground among the plantain stems, having by a reckless movement fallen out of the house. Thanks be there are no mosquitoes.
M'bo had a series of prophetic visions as to what would happen to us on our way down, founded on reminiscence and tradition. I tried to comfort him by pointing out that, were any one of his prophecies fulfilled, it would spare our friends and relations all funeral expenses; and, unless they went and wasted their money on a memorial window, that ought to be a comfort to our well-regulated minds.
I kept close to M'bo, and when we got to the shore, the rest of the wanderers being collected, we said "chances are there's a village round here"; and started to find it.
After compliments, as they say, in excerpts of diplomatic communications, three of their men took charge of the conversation on their side, and M'bo did ours. To M'bo's questions they gave a dramatic entertainment as answer, after the manner of these brisk, excitable Fans. One chief, however, soon settled down to definite details, prefacing his remarks with the silence-commanding "Azuna!
And although we in the middle of the canoe did some very spirited flapping, our whirlpool-breaking was no more successful than M'bo and Pierre's fending off, and many a wild waltz we danced that night with the waters of the River Ogowe. Unpleasant as going through the rapids was, when circumstances took us into the black current we fared no better.
M'bo did not see this, but was too good a Christian to be troubled by the disagreeable conviction that was in the minds of other members of my crew, namely, that our souls, unliberated by funeral rites from this world, would have to hover for ever over the Ogowe near the scene of our catastrophe.
Most of us arrived into deep channels of water which here and there cut in between this rock reef and the bank, M'bo was the first to find the way into certainty; he was, and I hope still is, a perfect wonder at this sort of work.
M'bo had advised that we should spend our first night at the same village that M. Allegret did: but when we reached it, a large village on the north bank, we seemed to have a lot of daylight still in hand, and thought it would be better to stay at one a little higher up, so as to make a shorter day's work for to-morrow, when we wanted to reach Kondo Kondo; so we went against the bank just to ask about the situation and character of the up-river villages.
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