Part 4 (1/2)
”All these precautions for a wretched fly”
”Exactly A imlet carries more terrors for the explorer than the elephant's trunk, and his hum is more dreaded than the roar of the lion The ed, alert, and bloodthirsty
He carries the germs of malaria with him; and malaria kills off more men than all the reptiles and wild ani?” asked Co hi the swaes But who can drain the swaht into the Great Forest?”
”Then we stand a fair chance to catch ri the okapi Fear the ainst its attack I have an idea uard”
”Quinine?” said Venning
”Quinine is an antidote IIt will be one of your duties to study the little brute, and you reat discovery, for instance, it has been discovered that the mosquito dislikes certain colours Why?
It may be that he would show more distinctly on one colour than on another, and so fall an easy victi bird But it may be that the leaves of some plant of a particular hue, or the juices of the plant, are distasteful to the insect Flies don't like the leaves of the blue-guuess mosquitoes have their likes and dislikes Find the plant they dislike, and we may defy them”
They had no accommodation for such a luxury as a tent, but instead they purchased canvas hareen canvas with strong eyelet-holes, to serve the purpose of a tent, in addition to a canvas awning with bamboo rods, to cover the whole boat in case they were not able to land for any length of time
It was a pleasant ti down the Channel into the Bay of Biscay, having h asalt air and clapped each other on the back
It was grand!
They stood in the bows, one hand on the rail, the other on the brim of a hat, and tasted the salt with a shtened the on the red, softened the colour to a fine healthy brown Then the good shi+p heeled over and rolled back with a swing of the yards, and the first roller from the Atlantic went majestically by They were on the old, old track of the adventurers, of the sea-rovers, of the great captains, of the empire builders, and before them, far off in the fastness of the Dark Continent, was the Great Forest with all its secrets fast held
CHAPTER III
THE CANOE ADRIFT
They passed in tireen bay of Funchal, the peak of Teneriffe, and then the shi+p turned on its heel to the West Coast, and, while yet a thousand ers--a shrike and a hawk- some upper current of air with red sand fro-place
They went away down into the Gulf of Guinea, and with o, approached the ave a tawny colour to the sea So far they had seen nothing but the squalid fringe of the Continent, and the da explorers had not lost the fine edge of their iination They knew that hundreds of miles back in the unexplored heart of the land there were secrets to be unraveled, and though they shed their war, they retained their ardour The river somewhere in its far reaches held for therandfather of all the crocodiles, a orilla waiting to offer theates of the Place of Rest?
”Surely,” said Coht off the reat river, ”thy slave is not cast down because the black children of the -place did mock us with their mouths, and the man, their father, wore the silk hat and frock-coat of civilization?”
”Perish the thought,” said Venning, throwing a banana peel at a brilliant flash of phosphorescent light in the oily waters ”Yet the man-as-tired, he of the parchment face, who sat on a verandah with his feet on the rail, prophesied that within seven days we should be sighing for English bacon in the country where a white man could breathe”
”There is no snap in the air; but I can breathe freely See;” and Co of the hunter,” said Venning, wisely ”Deep breathing gives aAlso this, that a man should keep his skin clean and hisafter the bath Therefore, I did ask the bo'sun to turn the hose on us in the ood friction”
”And he has another saying--that it is good for the skin to apply oil with the palm of the hand till the skin reddens I have a save contains eucalyptus oil”
”And the fat of a goat There is oats' fat, and the eucalyptus is not to the taste of the trumpeter”
”The mosquito?”