In Search of the Okapi | Page 8

of Biscay, having meanwhile passed
through a miserable twenty-four hours, they inhaled the strong salt air
and clapped each other on the back.
It was grand!
They stood in the bows, one hand on the rail, the other on the brim of a
hat, and tasted the salt with a smack of the lips. The wind blew its life
into their eyes, brightened them, toughened their skins, reddened them,
and the spray, drying on the red, softened the colour to a fine healthy
brown. Then the good ship heeled over and rolled back with a swing of
the yards, and the first roller from the Atlantic went majestically by.
They were on the old, old track of the adventurers, of the sea-rovers, of
the great captains, of the empire builders, and before them, far off in
the fastness of the Dark Continent, was the Great Forest with all its
secrets fast held.
CHAPTER III
THE CANOE ADRIFT
They passed in time the rocks that guard Madeira, the green bay of
Funchal, the peak of Teneriffe, and then the ship turned on its heel to
the West Coast, and, while yet a thousand miles away, was welcomed
by two messengers--a shrike and a hawk-moth, who had sailed along
some upper current of air with red sand from the Sahara to filter down
at last on to a firm resting-place.

They went away down into the Gulf of Guinea, and with many a call by
the way to discharge cargo, approached the mouth of the Congo, whose
flood gave a tawny colour to the sea. So far they had seen nothing but
the squalid fringe of the Continent, and the damp heat had steamed
them and tried them, but the young explorers had not lost the fine edge
of their imagination. They knew that hundreds of miles back in the
unexplored heart of the land there were secrets to be unraveled, and
though they shed their warmer clothing, they retained their ardour. The
river somewhere in its far reaches held for them, and them alone, new
forms of life--the grandfather of all the crocodiles, a mammoth hippo;
and somewhere in the forest was some huge gorilla waiting to offer
them battle. Moreover, were these not the gates of the Place of Rest?
"Surely," said Compton, as they steamed slowly into the night off the
mouth of the great river, "thy slave is not cast down because the black
children of the mud-house at our last calling-place did mock us with
their mouths, and the man, their father, wore the silk hat and frock-coat
of civilization?"
"Perish the thought," said Venning, throwing a banana peel at a brilliant
flash of phosphorescent light in the oily waters. "Yet the
man-who-was-tired, he of the parchment face, who sat on a verandah
with his feet on the rail, prophesied that within seven days we should
be sighing for English bacon in the country where a white man could
breathe."
"There is no snap in the air; but I can breathe freely. See;" and
Compton took a deep breath.
"That is the teaching of the hunter," said Venning, wisely. "Deep
breathing gives a man deep lungs. That is his teaching. Also this, that a
man should keep his skin clean and his muscles supple by hard rubbing
after the bath. Therefore, I did ask the bo'sun to turn the hose on us in
the morning when they clean down the decks. It is good friction."
"And he has another saying--that it is good for the skin to apply oil with
the palm of the hand till the skin reddens. I have a smell about me like
a blue gum-tree, for the ointment he gave contains eucalyptus oil."

"And the fat of a goat. There is much virtue in goats' fat, and the
eucalyptus is not to the taste of the trumpeter."
"The mosquito?"
"Even so."
"Then why don't you say so in good English?" and Compton dropped
away from his high-flown speech. "I bet that's a shark kicking up all
that phosphorescence."
"He swims in fire, like the--like the----"
"Sprat!"
"Like Apollo, you lean-minded insect. With every sweep of his tail he
sends out diadems of liquid gems, and his broad nose shovels fire
before him like a----"
"Stoker. Exactly; and if we had a lump of fat pork and a hook we could
drag him up and collect a basketful of jewels. I dare say he is leering up
at us with a green and longing eye."
"Did you hear that cry?" asked Venning, suddenly.
"No." "Was it the shark whispering, do you think?"
"Shut up and listen."
They leant over the rail and peered into the night. The drowsy air
throbbed to the measured beat of the engines, but they scarcely noticed
that accustomed sound.
"There it