Return to the River. 
1 7 i 
semi-halves must feel, although the absence of 
groaning and weeping was very suspicious, and I 
had asked in a friendly way, “ Them woman he 
make bob too much ? ” 
“Ye’, sar,” he replied with a full heart, “he cry 
too much.” 
When the last batch had disappeared with the 
last box I walked up to him, and said, “ Now, 
Andrews, you take hat, we go Gaboon.” 
Hotaloya at once assumed the maudlin expres¬ 
sion and insipid ricanement of the Hindu charged 
with “Sharm ki bat” (something shameful). 
“ Please, mas’r, I no can go—Nanny Po he be 
too far—I no look my fader (the villain had three), 
them boy he say I no look ’um again! ” 
The wives had won the day, and words would 
have been vain. He promised hard to get leave 
from his papa and “grand-pap,” and to join me 
after a last farewell at the Plateau. His face gave 
the lie direct to his speech, and his little manoeuvre 
for keeping the earnest-money failed ignobly. 
The swift brown stream carried us at full speed. 
“ Captain Merrick ” pointed out sundry short cuts, 
but my brain now refused to admit as truth a word 
coming from a Mpongwe. We passed some ba¬ 
teaux pecheurs, saw sundry shoals of fish furrowing 
the water, and after two hours we were bumping 
on the rocks outlying Mombe Creek and Nenga 
Oga village. The passage of the estuary was now 
