We anchored at Malali for breakfast, and Digui went to reconnoitre the rapid below that village. We were just finishing our meal when some messengers arrived from the chief of Bussa. Yet again we are to hear from him!
The messengers explained that although a nominal ruler, the chief had really less influence than any one in his village. He had done his very utmost to overcome the indifference of those about him to our wishes, but it had all been in vain. “We were relations!” he added, and he did not wish us to go away angry with him. To this I replied that one of our men had been molested and robbed, and I would not add a syllable to anything which was said until the objects stolen from him had been restored and the guilty men punished. The messengers swore that the chief knew nothing about the outrage, and, after all, this may have been true, for this poor down-trodden demi-god of a chief had none but venal courtiers about him, and unless we interfere to save it, Bussa is a prey marked down for the big teeth of perfidious Albion.
Digui returned wet through; he had tried to shoot the rapid, but the canoe was swamped, and he had only just time to save himself by running her into the bank. In fact, it was quite impossible to reconnoitre here as we had hitherto done. We had to make examining the river from the banks do. Such was the violence of the current, so narrow were the passes and so big the waves, that canoes could only pass the rapids by shooting through little channels quite impracticable to our barges.
A dreary prospect truly! But one way was open to us, and not even the natives knew anything about it. We walked along the bank, and an eager discussion took place at each eddy we came to. Were there rocks beneath them or were they merely whirlpools? At last, thanks be to God, we came to the end of them.
We managed, after all, to pass them all in our boats, and they were indeed enough to terrify any one; but they were really more alarming than dangerous, for there was plenty of water above most of the rocks. In one pass, some 54 yards wide, shut in between two large reefs, a good half of the waters of the Niger flings itself over with a tremendous roar.
The immense velocity of the current is such that the water dashes up the banks like the waves of the sea, and there is one paradoxical thing about it: the level is at least three feet higher near the banks than in midstream, where a kind of trough is formed.
It is along this trough that we have to steer, and it is really very dreadful to see the large masses of water piled up on either side, looking as if they were ready to rush together and engulf us between them.
Digui made a very sensible speech to his crew.
“Attention,” he cried, “no one is to look out of the boat; every one must put out all his strength; but I’ll break the head of the first man who looks beyond the deck.”
Then ensued thirty seconds of mortal agony; there was a kind of flash like lightning, and the current had seized the barge in its grip, hugging it tightly. The vessel seemed about to break beneath the masses of water flung back from the banks to the centre of the stream, but it was over; we had got safely through the pass.