The main channels of the Congo Kettle knew with a pilot’s knowledge; but the canoe-men soon left these, and crept off into winding backwaters, with wire-rooted mangroves sprawling over the mud on their banks, and strange whispering beast-noises coming from behind the thickets of tropical greenery.  The sun had slanted slow; ceibas and silk-cotton woods threw a shade dark almost as twilight; but the air was full of breathless heat, and Kettle’s white drill clothes hung upon him clammy and damp.  Behind him, in the stern of the canoe, Brass Pan scratched himself plaintively.

Dark fell and the dug-out was made fast to a mangrove root.  The Africans covered their heads to ward off ghosts, and snored on the damp floor of the canoe.  Kettle took quinine and dozed in the Madeira chair.  Mists closed round them, white with damp, earthy-smelling with malaria.  Then gleams of morning stole over the trees and made the mists visible, and Kettle woke with a seaman’s promptitude.  He roused Brass Pan, and Brass Pan roused the canoe-men, and the voyage proceeded.

Through more silent waterways the clumsy dug-out made her passage, where alligators basked on the mudbanks and sometimes swam up from below and nuzzled the sides of the boat, and where velvety black butterflies fluttered in dancing swarms across the shafts of sunlight; and at last her nose was driven on to a bed of slime, and Kettle was invited to “lib for beach.”

Brass Pan stepped dutifully over the mud, and Captain Kettle mounted his back and rode to dry ground without as much as splashing the pipeclay on his dainty canvas shoes.  A bush path opened out ahead of them, winding, narrow, uneven, and the man with the yaws went ahead and gave a lead.

As a result of exposure to the night mists of the river, Captain Kettle had an attack of fever on him which made him shake with cold and burn with heat alternately.  His head was splitting, and his skin felt as though it had been made originally to suit a small boy, and had been stretched to near bursting-point to serve its present wearer.

In the forest, the path was a mere tunnel amongst solid blocks of wood and greenery; in the open beyond, it was a slim alley between grass-blades eight feet high; and the only air which nourished them as they marched was hot enough to scorch the lungs as it was inhaled.  And if in addition to all this, it be remembered that the savages he was going to visit were practising cannibals, were notoriously treacherous, were violently hostile to all whites (on account of many cruelties bestowed by Belgians), and were especially exasperated against the stealer of their idol, it will be seen that from an ordinary point of view Captain Kettle’s mission was far from appetizing.

The little sailor, however, carried himself as jauntily as though he were stepping out along a mere pleasure parade, and hummed an air as he marched.  In ordinary moments I think his nature might be described as almost melancholy; it took times of stress like these to thoroughly brighten him.