So
each night at sunset Captain Jensen ran into the bank, and as soon
as the plank was out all the black passengers and the crew passed
down it and spent the night on shore. In five minutes the women
would have the fires lighted and the men would be cutting grass
for bedding and running up little shelters of palm boughs and
hanging up linen strips that were both tents and mosquito nets.
[Illustration: The Native Wife of a _Chef de Poste_.]
In the moonlight the natives with their camp-fires and torches made
most wonderful pictures. Sometimes for their sleeping place the
captain would select a glade in the jungle, or where a stream had
cut a little opening in the forest, or a sandy island, with tall
rushes on either side and the hot African moon shining on the white
sand and turning the palms to silver, or they would pitch camp in a
buffalo wallow, where the grass and mud had been trampled into a
clay floor by the hoofs of hundreds of wild animals. But the fact
that they were to sleep where at sunrise and at sunset came
buffaloes, elephants, and panthers, disturbed the women not at all,
and as they bent, laughing, over the iron pots, the firelight shone
on their bare shoulders and was reflected from their white teeth and
rolling eyes and brazen bangles.
Until late in the night the goats would bleat, babies cry, and the
"boys" and "mammies" talked, sang, quarrelled, beat tom-toms, and
squeezed mournful groans out of the accordion of civilization.
Pages:
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79