But I Refused The Encore, Because, Bashful
As I Am, I Could Not But Feel That My Last Performance Was Carried
Out With All The Superb Reckless ABANDON Of A Sarah Bernhardt, And A
Display Of Art Of This Order Should Satisfy Any African Village For
A Year At Least.
At last I got across the rocks on to a lovely
little beach of white sand, and stood there
Talking, surrounded by
my audience, until the canoe got over its difficulties and arrived
almost as scratched as I; and then we again said farewell and
paddled away, to the great grief of the natives, for they don't get
a circus up above Njole every week, poor dears.
Now there is no doubt that that chief's plantain-leaf chart was an
ingenious idea and a credit to him. There is also no doubt that the
Fan mile is a bit Irish, a matter of nine or so of those of ordinary
mortals, but I am bound to say I don't think, even allowing for
this, that he put those pieces far enough apart. On we paddled a
long way before we picked up village number one, mentioned in that
chart. On again, still longer, till we came to village number two.
Village number three hove in sight high up on a mountain side soon
after, but it was getting dark and the water worse, and the hill-
sides growing higher and higher into nobly shaped mountains,
forming, with their forest-graced steep sides, a ravine that, in the
gathering gloom, looked like an alley-way made of iron, for the
foaming Ogowe.
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