One day, calling at a town seventy miles from the coast, I found it almost torn down and the people in great distress. They had decided, months before, to move the entire town to the coast, and therefore had not planted their gardens that season. A month previous to my visit the people of the town, with all their goods and chattels, including chickens, goats and sheep, and in some cases even the material of their houses, had been loaded in a fleet of canoes of every size—some so small that a single man sitting in one of them found it necessary to straddle it and let his legs hang in the water, and some large enough for a chief and half a dozen wives and twice as many children, besides a few goats, and a few bunches of plantains and bananas. When they were ready to start a messenger arrived telling them that the people of Alum, a large town thirty miles down the river, were lying in wait for them, intending to kill some of them or take them prisoners. These two towns had been friendly of late; but the people down the river, knowing that the up-river people with their families and possessions would be at an extreme disadvantage, knowing also that they could not long delay their journey because of their limited supply of food, bethought them of some old score resulting from a former war, and resolved to lie in wait and take several prisoners in the hope of extorting a ransom. So they kept men watching day and night on the river.
The unfortunate people of the upper town proved their resourcefulness by proposing to me that I should tow the whole town down the river behind the Dorothy—and do it at night. I, for some reason, was fascinated with the idea, and it took only twelve chickens to persuade me.
Taking the entire town in tow, I started down the river about nine o’clock at night. Shortly after midnight I realized that we were approaching the enemy because of the extraordinary silence of those in the canoes, who hitherto had maintained a deafening noise, but now were hushed, having put out their torches, and were lying down flat in their canoes for safety. The enemy was on the watch; many canoes were on the river. It was pitch dark, not a single light or sign of life visible. The Dorothy as she suddenly burst upon their sight with all her lights, and going full speed, must have looked very formidable to people who had never seen anything of the kind, for she had not before passed at night. They may have supposed that a whole battalion of spirits of all kinds and colours were coming against them. The effect was an immediate panic. Calling loudly to each other and to their ancestors they hastened to the bank. It was only after we had passed that they discovered the canoes in tow and suspected that their enemies had outwitted them.
I visited the town soon afterwards for the purpose of laughing at them. And they laughed with me; laughed as only Africans can laugh.
One morning just at the break of day Toko burst into my bedroom all out of breath and cried: “Oh, Mr. Milligan, Doroty done loss! Doroty done loss! I look him: he live for beach. I fear he never be good no more.”
Before he had finished I had jumped out of bed, and in pajamas and bare feet was running to the beach where I discovered the Dorothy nearly a mile down the beach, stranded and lying on her side. It was the worst part of the whole beach, full of rocks, a place where no one would think of beaching even a small boat. It was a mystery how she ever got there without breaking to pieces. There had been a violent tornado during the night and her cable had parted. Very fortunately she was first carried out to sea. A calm followed and the sea gradually became very quiet. With the turning tide she drifted towards the shore. By the time she was near the beach there was neither wind nor wave and she drifted with the current which of course was strongest where it was deepest and unimpeded by rocks. So she wound in and out, where no human pilot could have glided her, until she stranded. Then the tide receded before the wind again arose; else she would have pounded on the beach. When I found her she was high and dry. I could not tell how much damage she had received and wondered whether she would ever float again. It was a day of suspense as well as hard work.
It took until three o’clock in the afternoon to get her straightened up and ready for the incoming tide to float her. I stayed there all day, having sent a boy to the house to fetch my breakfast and a pair of trousers. When the tide was low we carefully marked the channel; and when she floated we towed her until we were past the last rock and then I sprang to the engine, started her up and she was soon going full speed, nothing the worse for her visit ashore and evidently glad to get back to sea.
It was a trying day. I was standing in water most of the time. But the suspense was the hardest of all. It is not easy to imagine all that the launch meant to me. Every part of my work depended upon it. I gathered the schoolboys from many towns, some of them far away, and at the end of term returned them to their homes. I visited regularly the various groups of Christians scattered in widely separated towns, and by means of the launch was preaching in all the towns on the Gaboon and its tributaries. Its loss would have undone my work. And besides, there was a sentimental attachment which I can hardly explain. In that prolonged exile, this commodious, and almost luxurious, launch represented civilization—fine buildings, libraries, music, hotels, porterhouse steak, ice-cream and so forth, besides friends, home and all that. Well, when the suspense was completely relieved and the Dorothy was going at full speed back to her anchorage—but no one could understand who has not been an exile from home and civilization.
CREW OF THE DOROTHY.
At the end of the line, on the left, is Toko; the tall man at the other end is Ndutuma; the small boy is Nkogo.