"
"Really!" I exclaimed, "he never told me he was here." (This was a
lie, but somehow I was not afraid of lying to Komba.) "How do you know
that he was here?"
"One of our people who was fishing in the reeds saw him."
"Oh! that explains it, Komba. But what an odd place for him to fish
in; so far from home; and I wonder what he was fishing for. When you
have time, Komba, you must explain to me what it is that you catch
amidst the roots of thick reeds in such shallow water."
Komba replied that he would do so with pleasure--when he had time.
Then, as though to avoid further conversation he ran forward, and
thrusting the reeds apart, showed me a great canoe, big enough to hold
thirty or forty men, which with infinite labour had been hollowed out
of the trunk of a single, huge tree. This canoe differed from the
majority of those that personally I have seen used on African lakes
and rivers, in that it was fitted for a mast, now unshipped. I looked
at it and said it was a fine boat, whereon Komba replied that there
were a hundred such at Rica Town, though not all of them were so
large.
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