The jungle folk of Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

The work of unbeaching the logs and towing them to the steamer is very hard, but the danger and the excitement is in getting them loaded and stowed. They are made fast at the ship’s side. Several of the Kruboys remain in the water. They first knock the “dog” out of the last log; then they pass a chain around it which is made fast to the steel cable of the deck-winch. A signal, always accompanied by a shout, is passed up to one on deck who transmits it to the man at the winch and the log is lifted out of the water. The Kruboy rises with it a part of the way, then leaps into the water and prepares the next log. This may not seem so very difficult to men who are as much at home in the water as on shore. But these logs weighing a ton each are all the while dashing against each other or against the ship’s side with a deep boom that echoes through the ship. They are pitching and tossing and spinning, while the Kruboy tries to balance himself on top, keeps his eye on every log that is near, and at the same time does his work. But however it pitches and plunges he rides it as easily as a cowboy rides a pitching broncho. At first I looked on not only with interest, as always, but with a horrible fascination that I had never before experienced. All the passengers, from the upper deck, are watching the Kruboy lying across a log that heaves and rolls while he passes the chain beneath it, and at that moment another log is driven towards it with its full ton weight, the two colliding broadside. The passengers shout; if there is a lady aboard she screams. But somehow, when those logs meet, the Kruboy is not between them. He is underneath, and quite out of sight. At last he comes up somewhere, and shaking the water from his woolly head, looks up with a smile full of white teeth and says: “He nebber catch me.” And this goes on all day long, whenever logs are loaded. Occasionally an arm is broken, more often a leg, and sometimes a life is lost.

When the log is raised to the height of the lower deck it is passed from one spar to another which is over the hatch, and sweeps across the deck, all the Kruboys at the same moment shouting for everybody to get out of the way; but no time is lost in waiting for them to obey the order. They dodge skillfully, however; for one is always dodging something in Africa, and there is seldom any accident. But terrible accidents have sometimes occurred down in the hold, during the hard work of stowing the logs so that every cubic foot of space may be occupied. I have also seen the steel cable break when a log weighing nearly two tons was suspended over the hatch. One thinks, of course, that all the Kruboys down in that dark hold are directly under the falling log, which is never the case, and the volume of vocal noise which ascends immediately afterwards is a great relief to the blood-curdled feelings of the spectator, for it indicates that nobody is missing. But the fright extends beyond one’s solicitude for the Kruboys. For it looks as if that log would plunge right through the bottom of the ship. One will discover, however, that it fell upon a bed of several logs carefully placed there against such an accident.

But I have not yet told of the hardest and the bravest work of the Kruboy, a work for which few men anywhere in the world would have sufficient daring, namely, his landing of cargo through the surf in the season of the “calemma,” or great wave of the southwest coast. Twice I have gone far south of Gaboon when the sea was at the worst. Once I went as far as Benguela, in Angola, and again I visited the Congo. On the latter journey I was nearly five weeks on shipboard.

The boat-boys are divided into crews according to the number of surf-boats in use. In a good sea a crew usually consists of seven men, six of whom use paddles, while the seventh, the headman, stands erect in the stern of the boat and steers with an oar attached to the stern. In a rough sea fewer boats are lowered and the crew is increased to as many as thirteen men. However long the day’s work or hard the battle with the sea, they sing to the last stroke, keeping time with their paddles to one of their strange, wild boat-songs. Sometimes the song has only rhythm and no melody, being a monotonous repetition of several notes: “So sah, so sooh, so sah, so sooh, so sah, so sooh, ad—zh! So sah, so sooh,” etc. The man who sings at his work will do more work in a given time and do it better. Not that the African is always a great worker. He is seldom that; but he does more work singing than he would do not singing. And he sings because, however wronged and oppressed, there is a freedom within him which the white man can never take away; a lightness of heart, a buoyancy of spirit intractable to tyranny.

West Africa is notorious in all the world for its paucity of harbours, and its heavy surf, which at certain seasons rages like a battle, the roar of it like many voices defying the white man that would approach its shores. The surf at one place where we called was so bad that we were seven days discharging one day’s cargo. The sea rolled in with a tremendous swell—the calemma—like a wall of water that looked three stories high, which, as it approached the land, burst into a succession of breakers that raced towards the shore, and striking with the boom of cannon, tossed the white surf high into the air. One always feels, in going through it, that he is fighting a personal foe; there is even something human in the sound of it. The Kruboy says it is full of spirits. Savage spirits, they must be, and drunken, which leap and tumble and shout in mad carousal.

At each place the first venture in the surf-boats was watched eagerly from the ship. Three or four boats set out together with a light cargo. Near the surf they stop, landing one at a time, and waiting for the right moment. They wait perhaps as long as half an hour. Then, in the first boat, at the word of the headman, they throw their weight on the paddles and pull for their lives, not looking to either side, nor speaking a word. Now they are in the breakers, borne forward upon the racing waves with violent speed, a roaring monster before them and another more ferocious one pursuing. At this moment the safety of all depends upon the skill of the headman in keeping the boat placed right to the wave. And in any case, if the boat, upon reaching the beach, strike the ground at a moment when the water has receded, the breaker following will be upon it before they can drag it up the beach, and catching it up will perhaps stand it straight on end, and hurl it backward upon the beach; or, if it be not straight to the wave, it will be whirled about and flung up the beach, rolling over and over, with all its freight of boxes and barrels, the boys escaping I know not how—but not always escaping.

One day when the beach seemed much better than usual, the captain and the ship’s surgeon ventured ashore. The purpose of the captain was probably to visit the shippers with the object of drumming up trade, as captains are obliged to do on the coast. For this purpose he makes a very friendly call on each trader, listens to his graphaphone, and even praises it. He was brave to risk the surf, but he took the doctor. The captain afterwards narrated the adventure of their landing to a small but enthusiastic audience. He said that after waiting outside the surf half an hour, the headman suddenly gave the order, and in a moment they were in the breakers, riding on the top of one of them, and speeding towards the shore at the rate of “seventy miles an hour,” which calculation was merely his sensation expressed in terms of linear measure. The captain was in the bow of the boat well braced and cushioned. But when the boat struck the beach with the force of a railway collision, the doctor was thrown violently over two thwarts into the captain’s bosom, whom he clasped about the neck with a steel-like grip. The next moment another breaker picked the boat up and hurled it upon the beach, throwing both captain and doctor to a perfectly safe distance where they sprawled upon the sand. The doctor, still hugging the captain’s neck, and very much frightened, exclaimed: “O Captain, dear Captain, is there anybody killed but you and me?”

But now it is evening, at the close of a bad day. No white man has ventured ashore these ten days. But the Kruboys have gone, and there on the beach is a boat making a last attempt to come off. The sea has been getting worse all day, and it is now like a boiling caldron. They have been there for hours, and have tried again and again to get off, but have failed, though they have no cargo, and they are the best crew and have the best headman of all. Several times they have been thrown back on the beach, and once the boat was capsized when nearly through the breakers; now they are making a last effort.

They stand around the boat, their weight against it, alert, and waiting in eager attention for the word of command. A shout from the headman, and in a moment they have pushed the big boat out into the water, have leaped into it, grasped the paddles, and are pulling like mad. The first breaker strikes the boat a blow that staggers it: the spirits must have been very angry. They are through it; but the boat is nearly half full of water and is not straight. The headman throws himself upon the oar, but alas! with such force that the becket attaching it to the stern is wrenched off. They are now at the mercy of the next breaker, a fearful one, which sweeps them ashore with violence, whirling the boat round, and then rolling it over and over upon the beach. As the water recedes we see them lying scattered at random upon the sand. They get up slowly as if half dazed; and one of them lies unconscious as the next wave washes over him, matting his hair with the wet sand. And there lies the brave headman badly bruised, the flesh torn from his leg, exposing the bone from the knee down. But one poor boy has fought his last fight with the wild sea. Many fights he has won, but the spirits have beaten him this time. “Oh, boys,” he says, “I’m hurt. I can’t get up. I can’t even move. I’m afraid my back is broken.”

So it was indeed: his back was broken. Late in the night he died, the other boys sobbing like children as they stood around him. Next day they buried him; and that evening they got off to the ship. As they approached, the wind wafted to us the sound of a native dirge, weird and plaintive, which they were chanting for their dead brother.