PART TWO
CHAPTER VI
MATADI
It was evening. La Joconde, Berselius’s yacht, lay moored at the wharf of Matadi; warpling against the starboard plates, whimpering, wimpling, here smooth as glass, here eddied and frosted, a sea of golden light, a gliding mirror, went the Congo.
A faint, faint haze dulled the palms away on the other side; from the wharf, where ships were loading up with rubber, ivory, palm-oil, and bales of gum copal, the roar and rattle of steam-winches went across the water, far away across the glittering water, where the red flamingoes were flying, to that other shore where the palm trees showed their fringe of hot and hazy green.
The impression of heat which green, the coolest of all colours, can produce, damp heat, heart-weakening heat, that is the master impression produced by the Congo on the mind of man. All the other impressions are—to paraphrase Thénard—embroideries on this.
Yet how many other impressions there are! The Congo is Africa in a frank mood. Africa, laying her hand on her heart and speaking, or rather, whispering the truth.