When the procession first appeared, our cowboy’s face for a single instant had flamed with amazed incredulity.  Then a mask of expressionless stolidity fell across his features, which in no line thereafter varied one iota.

“What are they going to do with them?” murmured one of the Englishmen, at a loss.

“I reckon,” said the cowboy, “that they look on this as the easiest way to drown them all to onct.”

Then from behind one of the other boats suddenly appeared a huge German sailor with a hose.  The devoted imbeciles in the shore boat were drenched as by a cloud-burst.  Back and forth and up and down the heavy stream played, while every other human being about the ship shrieked with joy.  Did the victims rise up in a body and capture that hose nozzle and turn the stream to sweep the decks?  Did they duck for shelter?  Did they at least know enough to scatter and run?  They did none of these things; but sat there in meek little rows like mannikins until the boat was half full of water and everything awash.  Then, when the sailor shut off the stream, they continued to sit there until the mate came to order them out.  Why?  I cannot tell you.  Perhaps that is the German idea of how to take a joke.  Perhaps they were afraid worse things might be consequent on resistance.  Perhaps they still hoped to go ashore.  One of the Englishmen asked just that question.

“What,” he demanded disgustedly, “what is the matter with the beggars?”

Our cowboy may have had the correct solution.  He stretched his long legs and jumped down from the rail.

“Nothing stirring above the ears,” said he.

It is customary in books of travel to describe this part of the journey somewhat as follows:  “Skirting the low and uninteresting shores of Africa we at length reached,” etc.  Low and uninteresting shores!  Through the glasses we made out distant mountains far beyond nearer hills.  The latter were green-covered with dense forests whence rose mysterious smokes.  Along the shore we saw an occasional cocoanut plantation to the water’s edge and native huts and villages of thatch.  Canoes of strange models lay drawn up on shelving beaches; queer fish-pounds of brush reached out considerable distances from the coast.  The white surf pounded on a yellow beach.

All about these things was the jungle, hemming in the plantations and villages, bordering the lagoons, creeping down until it fairly overhung the yellow beaches; as though, conqueror through all the country beyond, it were half-inclined to dispute dominion with old Ocean himself.  It looked from the distance like a thick, soft coverlet thrown down over the country; following—­or, rather, suggesting—­the inequalities.  Through the glasses we were occasionally able to peep under the edge of this coverlet, and see where the fringe of the jungle drew back in a little pocket, or to catch the sheen of mysterious dark rivers slipping to the sea.  Up these dark rivers, by way of the entrances of these tiny pockets, the imagination then could lead on into the dimness beneath the sunlit upper surfaces.