How They Stand
The Long Submersion They Must Undergo I Do Not Know; The Natives
Tell Me They Begin To
Spring up as soon as ever the water falls and
leaves the island exposed; that they very soon grow up
And flower,
and keep on flowering until the Ogowe comes down again and rides
roughshod over Kondo Kondo for months. While the men were making
their fire I went across the island to see the great Alemba rapid,
of which I had heard so much, that lay between it and the north
bank. Nobler pens than mine must sing its glory and its grandeur.
Its face was like nothing I have seen before. Its voice was like
nothing I have heard. Those other rapids are not to be compared to
it; they are wild, headstrong, and malignant enough, but the Alemba
is not as they. It does not struggle, and writhe, and brawl among
the rocks, but comes in a majestic springing dance, a stretch of
waltzing foam, triumphant.
The beauty of the night on Kondo Kondo was superb; the sun went down
and the afterglow flashed across the sky in crimson, purple, and
gold, leaving it a deep violet-purple, with the great stars hanging
in it like moons, until the moon herself arose, lighting the sky
long before she sent her beams down on us in this valley. As she
rose, the mountains hiding her face grew harder and harder in
outline, and deeper and deeper black, while those opposite were just
enough illumined to let one see the wefts and floating veils of
blue-white mist upon them, and when at last, and for a short time
only, she shone full down on the savage foam of the Alemba, she
turned it into a soft silver mist.
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