The singing rose louder as the second craft slipped jerkily into the water, sending angry little waves to slap against the logs that supported Norah.
As the work of balancing the loads progressed, Archie from his rock called out the names. 'Mulenga, behind the Mama. Benesh, on the other raft, beside the kitchen box....'
As he was named, each native raised his ragged clothes as high as decency and Norah's presence would permit and climbed to his place, poising on his head his few possessions—a torn reed mat or a black clay cooking pot, an iron spear or axe, and strips of dried meat that tainted the air. With each fresh comer's weight, the raft dipped and danced....
By the following Saturday Mr. Mackenzie had completed a house-to-house canvas of the ten adult inhabitants of Abercorn. Hume the Postmaster, the doctor and the Assistant Native Commissioner had rallied to the Mackenzie standard. At four o'clock their leader, girt in a stiff collar, called officially to inform Mrs. Lavater that a tennis court was demanded by the majority of the town.
He dropped his bomb and retreated outwardly triumphant, but in his heart uneasy, for he knew how hardly women like Mrs. Lavater accept defeat. A sudden scurry of rain sent him for shelter into the post office, where he confided in Hume that he had not liked 'the calm way she took it.'
At lake level that scurry of rain was magnified into a vicious little squall that nearly ended Archie's and Norah's problems before their destined time.
The rafts were crawling over the glassy surface under the slow urge of unaccustomed arms. Their course pointed from headland to headland of a bay that bit deep into the thickly wooded slope.
Archie, since a hippo, inquisitive or frightened, had risen under the baggage raft and tipped its crew into the crocodile-infested water, had left Matao in the bows to keep a look-out ahead and had posted himself in the stern of his craft, his rifle across his knees, his eyes plumbing the bottomless blue of the lake. Some instinct, or perhaps the continuous drone of Matao's voice, made him turn, to catch his lookout man absorbed in conversation with the bow paddler.
He snatched the steersman's paddle and the water churned as he headed the clumsy craft landwards. For where the headland should have shown clear in their path stood a blank wall of mist. Alive at last to their danger, the unskilled paddlers strained their strength to drive the heavy rafts to shore, but, in spite of their efforts, the squall gained on them. The sky darkened and they heard the oncoming howl of the wind.
Their breath hissed between their teeth, their muscles stood in knots on their arms and naked backs, as Archie, paddling with long, quick strokes, urged them on. Waves splashed over the raft, drenching Norah to the skin, and stinging her delicate body with their impact. The last slapped up full in her face, setting her spluttering with its brackish taste and clinging with her slim fingers to the knotted logs. Two of the loads broke loose and swept past her lakewards.