90 AFRICAN CAMP FIRES. 



Occasional natives, waist deep and fishing, stared 

 after us open-eyed. The Yankee ventured a 

 guess as to how hard she would hit on a mudbank. 

 She promptly proved his guess a rank under- 

 estimate by doing so. We fell in a heap on the 

 bottom. The dhow bore down on us with 

 majestic momentum. The boat boys leaned 

 frantically on their sweeps, and managed just to 

 avoid us. The dhow also rammed the mudbank. 

 A dozen reluctant boys hopped overboard 

 and pushed us off. We pursued our merry 

 way again. On either hand now appeared fish 

 weirs of plaited coco fibre ; which, being planted 

 in the shallows, helped us materially to guess at 

 the channel. Naked men, up to their shoulders 

 in the water, attended to some mysterious need 

 of the nets, or emerged dripping and sparkling 

 from the water with baskets of fish atop their 

 heads. The channel grew even narrower, and 

 the mudbanks more frequent. We dodged a 

 dozen in our headlong course. Our local guide, 

 a Swahili in tarboosh and a beautiful saffron 

 robe, showed signs of strong excitement. We 

 were to stop, he said, around the next bend ; 

 and at this rate we never could stop. The 

 Yankee remarked, superfluously, that it would 

 be handy if this dod-blistered engine had a 



