About midnight, Prince Paul, who had bewailed the hardship of
passing a night sans mostiquaire in the bush, and whose violent
plungings showed that he failed to manage un somme, proposed to
land and to fetch fire from l'habitation.
"What habitation?"
"Oh! a little village belonging to papa."
"And why the ---didn't you mention it?"
"Ah! this is Mponbinda, and you know we're bound for Mbata!"
Nothing negrotic now astonishes us, there is nought new to me in
Africa. We landed upon a natural pier of rock ledge, and, after
some 400 yards of good path, we entered a neat little village,
and found our crew snoring snugly asleep. We "exhorted them,"
refreshed the fire, and generously recruited exhausted nature
with quinine, julienne and tea, potatoes and potted meats, pipes
and cigars. So sped my annual unlucky day, and thus was spent my
first jungle-night almost exactly under the African line.
At 5 A. M. the new morning dawned, the young tide flowed, the
crabs disappeared, and the gig, before high and dry on the hard
mud, once more became buoyant. Forward again! The channel was a
labyrinthine ditch, an interminable complication of over-arching
roots, and of fallen trees forming gateways; the threshold was a
maze of slimy stumps, stems, and forks in every stage of growth
and decay, dense enough to exclude the air of heaven.
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