African Camp Fires eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 275 pages of information about African Camp Fires.

African Camp Fires eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 275 pages of information about African Camp Fires.

In the rest of the ship’s company were a dozen or so other Englishmen of the upper classes, either army men on shooting trips, or youths going out with some idea of settling in the country.  They were a clean-built, pleasant lot; good people to know anywhere, but of no unusual interest.  It was only when one went abroad into the other nations that inscribable human interest could be found.

There was the Greek, Scutari, and his bride, a languorous rather opulent beauty, with large dark eyes for all men, and a luxurious manner of lying back and fanning herself.  She talked, soft-voiced, in half a dozen languages, changing from one to the other without a break in either her fluency or her thought.  Her little lithe, active husband sat around and adored her.  He was apparently a very able citizen indeed, for he was going out to take charge of the construction work on a German railway.  To have filched so important a job from the Germans themselves shows that he must have had ability.  With them were a middle-aged Holland couple, engaged conscientiously in travelling over the globe.  They had been everywhere—­the two American hemispheres, from one Arctic Sea to another, Siberia, China, the Malay Archipelago, this, that, and the other odd corner of the world.  Always they sat placidly side by side, either in the saloon or on deck, smiling benignly, and conversing in spaced, comfortable syllables with everybody who happened along.  Mrs. Breemen worked industriously on some kind of feminine gear, and explained to all and sundry that she travelled “to see de sceenery wid my hoos-band.”

Also in this group was a small wiry German doctor, who had lived for many years in the far interior of Africa, and was now returning after his vacation.  He was a little man, bright-eyed and keen, with a clear complexion and hard flesh, in striking and agreeable contrast to most of his compatriots.  The latter were trying to drink all the beer on the ship; but as she had been stocked for an eighty-day voyage, of which this was but the second week, they were not making noticeable headway.  However, they did not seem to be easily discouraged.  The Herr Doktor was most polite and attentive, but as we did not talk German nor much Swahili, and he had neither English nor much French, we had our difficulties.  I have heard Billy in talking to him scatter fragments of these four languages through a single sentence!

For several days we drifted down a warm flat sea.  Then one morning we came on deck to find ourselves close aboard a number of volcanic islands.  They were composed entirely of red and dark purple lava blocks, rugged, quite without vegetation save for occasional patches of stringy green in a gully; and uninhabited except for a lighthouse on one, and a fishing shanty near the shores of another.  The high mournful mountains, with their dark shadows, seemed to brood over hot desolation.  The rusted and battered stern of a wrecked steamer stuck up at an acute angle from the surges.  Shortly after we picked up the shores of Arabia.

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African Camp Fires from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.