第23章

AN EARLY CHRISTIAN CEREMONY.

Next morning, at the earliest blush of dawn, we rose, performed such ablutions as circumstances would allow, and generally made ready to start.I am bound to say that when there was sufficient light to enable us to see each other's faces I, for one, burst out into a roar of laughter.Job's fat and comfortable countenance was swollen out to nearly twice its normal size from mosquito bites, and Leo's condition was not much better.Indeed, of the three I had come off much the best, probably owing to the toughness of my dark skin, and to the fact that a good deal of it was covered by hair, for since we started from England Ihad allowed my naturally luxuriant beard to grow at its own sweet will.But the other two were, comparatively speaking, clean shaved, which of course gave the enemy a larger extent of open country to operate on, though as for Mahomed, the mosquitoes, recognizing the taste of a true believer, would not touch him at any price.How often, I wonder, during the next week or so did we wish that we were flavored like an Arab!

By the time that we had done laughing as heartily as our swollen lips would allow, it was daylight, and the morning breeze was coming up from the sea, cutting lanes through the dense marsh mists, and here and there rolling them before it in great balls of fleecy vapor.So we set our sail, and having first taken a look at the two dead lions and the dead alligator, which we were of course unable to skin, being destitute of means of curing the pelts, we started, and, sailing through the lagoon, followed the course of the river on the farther side.At midday, when the breeze dropped, we were fortunate enough to find a convenient piece of dry land on which to camp and light a fire, and here we cooked two wild duck and some of the water buck's fleshnot in a very appetizing way, it is true, but still sufficiently.

The rest of the buck's flesh we cut into strips and hung in the sun to dry into "biltong," as I believe South African Dutch call flesh thus prepared.On this welcome patch of dry land we stopped until the following dawn, and, as before, spent the night in warfare with the mosquitoes, but without other troubles.The next day or two passed in similar fashion, and without noticeable adventures, except that we shot a specimen of a peculiarly graceful hornless buck, and saw many varieties of water-lilies in full bloom, some of them blue and of exquisite beauty, though few of the flowers were perfect, owing to the prevalence of a white water-maggot with a green head that fed upon them.

It was on the fifth day of our journey, when we had travelled, so far as we could reckon, about one hundred and thirty-five to a hundred and forty miles westward from the coast, that the first event of any real importance occurred.On that morning the usual wind failed us about eleven o'clock, and after pulling a little way we were forced to halt more or less exhausted at what appeared to be the junction of our stream with another of a uniform width of about fifty feet.Some trees grew near at handthe only trees in all this country were along the banks of the riverand under these we rested, and then, the land being fairly dry just here, walked a little way along the edge of the river to prospect, and shoot a few waterfowl for food.Before we had gone fifty yards we perceived that all hopes of getting farther up the stream in the whale-boat were at an end, for not two hundred yards above where we had stopped were a succession of shallows and mud-banks, with not six inches of water over them.It was a watery _i_ cul-de-sac _i_.

Turning back, we walked some way along the banks of the other river, and soon came to the conclusion, from various indications, that it was not a river at all, but an ancient canal, like the one which is to be seen above Mombasa, on the Zanzibar coast, connecting the Tana River with the Ozy, in such a way as to enable the shipping coming down the Tana to cross to the Ozy, and reach the sea by it, and thus avoid the very dangerous bar that blocks the mouth of the Tuna.The canal before us had evidently been dug out by man at some remote period of the world's history, and the results of his digging still remained in the shape of the raised banks that had no doubt once formed towing-paths.Except here and there, where they had been hollowed out or fallen in, these banks of stiff, binding clay were at a uniform distance from each other, and the depth of the water also appeared to be uniform.Current there was little or none, and, as a consequence, the surface of the canal was choked with vegetable growth, intersected by little paths of clear water, made, I suppose, by the constant passage of waterfowl, iguanas, and other vermin.Now, as it was evident that we could not proceed up the river, it became equally evident that we must either try the canal or else return to the sea.We could not stop where we were, to be baked by the sun and eaten up by the mosquitoes, till we died of fever in.that dreary marsh.

"Well, I suppose that we most try it," I said; and the others assented in their various waysLeo, as though it were the best joke in the world; Job, in respectful disgust; and Mahomed, with an invocation to the Prophet, and a comprehensive curse upon all unbelievers and their ways of thought and travel.