The African Trader | Page 5

chattering loudly, now making his way aloft, whence he looked eastwards, and now returning to the caboose, as if to communicate his ideas to his sable friend.
"What makes Quako so frisky this morning?" I asked of Dick Radforth, the boatswain, a sturdy broad shouldered man of iron frame, who, with trousers tucked up, and bare arms brawny as those of Hercules, was standing, bucket in hand, near me, deluging the deck with water.
"He smells his native land, Harry," he answered, "and thinks he is going to pay a visit to his kith and kindred. We shall have to keep him moored pretty fast, or he will be off into the woods to find them. I have a notion you will get a sight of it before long, when the sea breeze sets in and sends the old barky through the water."
"What! the coast of Africa!" I exclaimed, and thoughts of that wonderful region, with its unexplored rivers, its gloomy forests, and its black skinned inhabitants, with their barbarous customs and superstitious rites, rose in my mind.
"Aye, sure and it will be a pleasant day when we take our departure from the land, and see the last of it," observed Dick. "If those niggers would trade like other people we might make quick work of it, and be away home again in a few weeks, but we may thank our stars if we get a full cargo by this time next year, without leaving some of our number behind."
"What? I should not fancy that any of our fellows were likely to desert," I observed.
"No; but they are likely to get pressed by a chap who won't let go his gripe of them again," answered Dick.
"Who is that?" I asked.
"Yellow-fingered Jack we call him sometimes, the coast fever," said Dick. "If they would but take better care of themselves and not drink those poisonous spirits and sleep on shore at night, they might keep out of his clutches. I give this as a hint to you, Harry. I have been there a score of times, and am pretty well seasoned, but I have felt his gripe, though I do not fear him now." I thanked the boatswain for his advice. It was given, I suspected, for others' benefit as well as mine.
As the bright hot red sun rose in the sky, casting his beams down on our heads, and making the pitch bubble up from the seams in the deck--as it had done not unfrequently during the voyage--a few cats' paws were seen playing over the mirror-like deep. The sails bulged out occasionally, again to hang down as before; then once more they swelled out with the gentle breeze, and the brigantine glided through the water, gradually increasing her speed. I was eagerly looking out for the coast; at length it came in sight--its distant outline rendered indistinct by the misty pall which hung over it. As we drew nearer, its forest covered heights had a particularly gloomy and sombre appearance, which made me think of the cruelties I had heard were practised on those shores, of the barbarous slave trade, of the fearful idolatries of its dark-skinned children, of its wild beasts, and of its deadly fevers. There was nothing exhilarating, nothing to give promise of pleasure or amusement. As our gallant brigantine glided gaily on, sending the sparkling foam from her bows through the tiny wavelets of the ocean, which glittered in the radiance of a blue and cloudless sky, and her sails filled with the fresh sea breeze, these feelings rapidly wore off. Now, on either side, appeared a fleet of fishing canoes, the wild songs of their naked crews coming across the water, as with rugged sails of matting lolling at their ease, they steered towards the shore. We overtook some of them, and such a loud jabber as they set up, talking to each other, or hailing us, I had never heard.
Being near enough to the dangerous coast, we hove-to, and watched them as they fearlessly made their way to shore on the summits of a succession of rollers which burst in fearful breakers on the beach. With our glasses we could see hundreds of dingy figures like black ants, hurrying down to meet them, and to assist in hauling up their canoes. As I cast my eye along the coast I could see many a bay and headland bordered with a rim of glittering white sand, fringed by an unbroken line of sparkling surf. Now we could make out the mud walls and thatched roofs of the native villages, scattered here and there along the shore, mostly nestling amid groves of graceful cocoa-nut trees, while further inland appeared, at distant intervals, that giant monarch of the tropical forest, the silk cotton tree, stretching its mighty limbs