“That’s all right,” said the purser.  Then the paddling stopped, and M. Jacques looked over the stern to watch the swell.  For a long time we hung there, the waves rolling smoothly under us and crashing against the steep bank of sand just in front, as a stormy sea crashes against a south-coast esplanade at full tide under a south-west wind.  Gently moving his paddle this way and that, M. Jacques held the stern to the swell, till suddenly he shouted “One time!” and the natives drove their paddles Into the water like spears.  On the top of a huge billow we rushed forward.  It broke, and we crashed down upon the beach.  In a dome of green and white the surge passed clean over us, and then, with a roar like a torrent, it dragged us back.  Another great wave broke over the stern, and again we were hurled forward beneath it.  This time a crowd of natives rushed into the foam and, clinging to the gunwale, held us steady against the backwash.  Out we all sprang into two feet of rushing water, and hauled the boat clear up the shore.

“Surf no good!” observed M. Jacques; “but purser live this time,” Then he shook himself like a dog, rolled on the fine sand, shook himself again, and with the smile of all the angels, remarked, “Now we fit for go get one dilly drink.”

Leaving the natives to roll up the great barrels from the boat, we climbed the beach to a long but narrow strip of fairly hard ground, on which one solitary thorn-tree had contrived to grow.  The further side of the bank fell steeply into the vast swamp of the coast.  There the mangrove trees stood rotting in black water and slimy ooze, so thick together that the misty sun never penetrated half-way down their inextricable branches, and even from the edge of the forest one looked into darkness.  On the top of that thin plateau between the roaring sea and the impenetrable swamp, M. Jacques had made his home.  It was a ramshackle little house, run together of boards and corrugated iron, and bearing evidence of all the mistakes of which a West African native is capable.  At midday the solitary thorn afforded a transparent shade; for the rest of daylight the dwelling sweltered and boiled unprotected.  Round house and tree ran a mud wall, about five feet high, loop-holed at intervals.  And just inside the house door was fastened a rack of three rifles, kept tolerably clean.

“Plenty pom-pom,” said M. Jacques, as I looked at them (he returned to the language that I evidently understood better than his own).  “Black man he cut throats too plenty much.”

Opening a padlocked trap-door in the flooring, he disappeared into an underground cavern.  Calling to me, he struck a match, and I looked down into a kind of dungeon cell, smelling of damp like a vault There I saw a broken camp-bed, covered with a Kaffir blanket.

“Here live for catch dilly sleep,” he cried triumphantly, as though exhibiting a palace.  “Plenty cool night here.”

Then, with a bottle in one hand, he came up the ladder, and carefully locking the trap-door and pulling a table over it, he observed, “Black man he thief too plenty much.”