“What do we do?” said the Doctor, when I had begun asking questions inmy turn. “Our business keeps us pretty busy, and in our leisure time wetalk politics.”
“Yes, by the special mercy of Providence Severall is a rank Radical andI am a good stiff Unionist, and we talk Home Rule for two solid hoursevery evening.”
“And drink quinine cocktails,” said the Doctor. “We’re both pretty wellsalted now, but our normal temperature was about 103 last year. Ishouldn’t, as an impartial adviser, recommend you to stay here very longunless you are collecting bacilli as well as butterflies. The mouth ofthe Ogowai River will never develop into a health resort.”
There is nothing finer than the way in which these outlying pickets ofcivilization distil a grim humour out of their desolate situation, andturn not only a bold, but a laughing face upon the chances which theirlives may bring. Everywhere from Sierra Leone downwards I had found thesame reeking swamps, the same isolated fever-racked communities and thesame bad jokes. There is something approaching to the divine in thatpower of man to rise above his conditions and to use his mind for thepurpose of mocking at the miseries of his body.
“Dinner will be ready in about half an hour, Captain Meldrum,” said theDoctor. “Walker has gone in to see about it; he’s the housekeeper thisweek. Meanwhile, if you like, we’ll stroll round and I’ll show you thesights of the island.”
The sun had already sunk beneath the line of palm trees, and the greatarch of the heaven above our head was like the inside of a huge shell,shimmering with dainty pinks and delicate iridescence. No one who hasnot lived in a land where the weight and heat of a napkin becomeintolerable upon the knees can imagine the blessed relief which thecoolness of evening brings along with it. In this sweeter and purer airthe Doctor and I walked round the little island, he pointing out thestores, and explaining the routine of his work.
“There’s a certain romance about the place,” said he, in answer to someremark of mine about the dulness of their lives. “We are living herejust upon the edge of the great unknown. Up there,” he continued,pointing to the north-east, “Du Chaillu penetrated, and found the homeof the gorilla. That is the Gaboon country—the land of the great apes.In this direction,” pointing to the south-east, “no one has been veryfar. The land which is drained by this river is practically unknown toEuropeans. Every log which is carried past us by the current has comefrom an undiscovered country. I’ve often wished that I was a betterbotanist when I have seen the singular orchids and curious-lookingplants which have been cast up on the eastern end of the island.”
The place which the Doctor indicated was a sloping brown beach, freelylittered with the flotsam of the stream. At each end was a curved point,like a little natural breakwater, so that a small shallow bay was leftbetween. This was full of floating vegetation, with a single hugesplintered tree lying stranded in the middle of it, the current ripplingagainst its high black side.
“These are all from up country,” said the Doctor. “They get caught inour little bay, and then when some extra freshet comes they are washedout again and carried out to sea.”
“What is the tree?” I asked.
“Oh, some kind of teak I should imagine, but pretty rotten by the lookof it. We get all sorts of big hardwood trees floating past here, to saynothing of the palms. Just come in here, will you?”
He led the way into a long building with an immense quantity of barrelstaves and iron hoops littered about in it.
“This is our cooperage,” said he. “We have the staves sent out inbundles, and we put them together ourselves. Now, you don’t see anythingparticularly sinister about this building, do you?”
I looked round at the high corrugated iron roof, the white wooden walls,and the earthen floor. In one corner lay a mattress and a blanket.
“I see nothing very alarming,” said I.
“And yet there’s something out of the common, too,” he remarked. “Yousee that bed? Well, I intend to sleep there to-night. I don’t want tobuck, but I think it’s a bit of a test for nerve.”
“Why?”
“Oh, there have been some funny goings on. You were talking about themonotony of our lives, but I assure you that they are sometimes quite asexciting as we wish them to be. You’d better come back to the house now,for after sundown we begin to get the fever-fog up from the marshes.There, you can see it coming across the river.”
I looked and saw long tentacles of white vapour writhing out from amongthe thick green underwood and crawling at us over the broad swirlingsurface of the brown river. At the same time the air turned suddenlydank and cold.
“There’s the dinner gong,” said the Doctor. “If this matter interestsyou I’ll tell you about it afterwards.”
It did interest me very much, for there was something earnest andsubdued in his manner as he stood in the empty coope
rage, which appealedvery forcibly to my imagination. He was a big, bluff, hearty man, thisDoctor, and yet I had detected a curious expression in his eyes as heglanced about him—an expression which I would not describe as one offear, but rather that of a man who is alert and on his guard.
“By the way,” said I, as we returned to the house, “you have shown methe huts of a good many of your native assistants, but I have not seenany of the natives themselves.”
“They sleep in the hulk over yonder,” the Doctor answered, pointing overto one of the banks.
“Indeed. I should not have thought in that case that they would need thehuts.”
“Oh, they used the huts until quite recently. We’ve put them on the hulkuntil they recover their confidence a little. They were all half madwith fright, so we let them go, and nobody sleeps on the island exceptWalker and myself.”
“What frightened them?” I asked.
“Well, that brings us back to the same story. I suppose Walker has noobjection to your hearing all about it. I don’t know why we should makeany secret about it, though it is certainly a pretty bad business.”
He made no further allusion to it during the excellent dinner which hadbeen prepared in my honour. It appeared that no sooner had the littlewhite topsail of the _Gamecock_ shown round Cape Lopez than these kindfellows had begun to prepare their famous pepper-pot—which is thepungent stew peculiar to the West Coast—and to boil their yams and sweetpotatoes. We sat down to as good a native dinner as one could wish,served by a smart Sierra Leone waiting boy. I was just remarking tomyself that he at least had not shared in the general flight when,having laid the dessert and wine upon the table, he raised his hand tohis turban.
“Anyting else I do, Massa Walker?” he asked.