The Pirate Slaver | Page 5

in four fathoms of water.
It was a queer spot that we now found ourselves in; queer to me at least,

who was now entering upon my first experience of West African
service. We were riding with our head to the north-west under the
combined influence of wind and tide together, with the low
point--named Banana Peninsula, so the master informed me, though
why it should be so named I never could understand, for there was not a
single banana-tree upon the whole peninsula, as I subsequently
ascertained. Let me see, where was I? I have gone adrift among those
non-existent banana-trees. Oh yes, I was going to attempt to make a
word-sketch of the scene which surrounded us after we had let go our
anchor and furled our canvas. The sea-breeze was piping strong from
the westward, while the tide was ebbing down the creek from the
northward, and under these combined influences the Barracouta was
riding with her head about north--west. Banana Peninsula lay ahead of
us, trending away along our larboard beam and slightly away from us
to the southward for about half-a-mile, where it terminated in a sandy
beach bordered by a broad patch of smooth water, athwart which
marched an endless line of mimic breakers from the wall of flashing
white surf that thundered upon the outer edge of the protecting shoal
three-quarters of a mile to seaward. The point was pretty thickly
covered with bush and trees, chiefly cocoa-nut and other palms--except
in the immediate vicinity and in front of the two factories, where the
soil had been cleared and a sort of rough wharf constructed by driving
piles formed of the trunks of trees into the ground and wedging a few
slabs of sawn timber in behind them. The point, for a distance of
perhaps a mile from its southern extremity, was very narrow--not more
than from one hundred and fifty to two hundred yards wide--but
beyond that it widened out considerably until it merged in the mainland.
On the opposite side of the creek, on our starboard quarter and astern of
us, was what I at first took to be a single island, but which I
subsequently found to be a group of about a dozen islands, of which the
smallest may have been half-a-mile long by about a third of a mile
broad, while the largest was some nine or ten miles long by about three
miles broad. These islands really constituted the northern bank of the
river for a distance some twenty-four miles up the stream, being cut off
from the mainland and from each other by narrow canal-like creeks
running generally in a direction more or less east and west. The land all
about here was low, and to a great extent swampy, the margin of the

creeks being lined with mangroves that presented a very curious
appearance as they stood up out of the dark, slimy-looking water, their
trunks supported upon a network of naked, twisted roots that strongly
suggested to me the idea of spiders' legs swollen and knotted with some
hideous, deforming disease. The trees themselves, however, apart from
their twisted, gnarled, and knotted roots, presented a very pleasing
appearance, for they had just come into full leaf, and their fresh green
foliage was deeply grateful to the eye satiated with a long and
wearisome repetition of the panorama of unbroken sea and sky. Beyond
the belt of mangroves the islands were overgrown with dense bush,
interspersed with tall trees, some of which were rich with violet
blossoms growing in great drooping clusters, like the flowers of the
laburnum; while others were heavily draped with long, trailing sprays
of magnificent jasmine, of which there were two kinds, one bearing a
pinky flower, and the other a much larger star-like bloom of pure white.
The euphorbia, acacia, and baobab or calabash-tree were all in bloom;
and here and there, through openings between the trunks of the
mangroves, glimpses were caught of rich splashes of deep
orange-colour, standing out like flame against the dark background of
shadowed foliage, that subsequent investigation proved to be clumps of
elegant orchids. It appeared that we had entered the river at precisely
the right time of the year to behold it at its brightest and best, for the
spring rains had only recently set in, and all Nature was rioting in the
refreshment of the welcome moisture and bursting forth into a joyous
prodigality of leaf and blossom, of colour and perfume, of life and glad
activity. The forest rang with the calls and cries of pairing birds; flocks
of parrots, parrakeets, and love-birds were constantly wheeling and
darting hither and thither; kingfishers flitted low across the placid water,
or watched motionless from some overhanging branch for the passage
of their unsuspecting prey; the