While all this is going on, the Eclaireur quietly
slides down river, with the current, broadside on as if she smelt
her stable at Lembarene. This I find is her constant habit whenever
the captain, the engineer, and the man at the wheel are all busy in
a row along the rail, shouting overside, which occurs whenever we
have passengers to land. Her iniquity being detected when the last
canoe load has left for the shore, she is spun round and sent up
river again at full speed.
We go on up stream; now and again stopping at little villages to
land passengers or at little sub-factories to discharge cargo, until
evening closes in, when we anchor and tie up at O'Saomokita, where
there is a sub-factory of Messrs. Woermann's, in charge of which is
a white man, the only white man between Lembarene and Njole. He
comes on board and looks only a boy, but is really aged twenty. He
is a Frenchman, and was at Hatton and Cookson's first, then he
joined Woermann's, who have put him in charge of this place. The
isolation for a white man must be terrible; sometimes two months
will go by without his seeing another white face but that in his
looking-glass, and when he does see another, it is only by a
fleeting visit such as we now pay him, and to make the most of this,
he stays on board to dinner.
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