"
The morning came at last, and the six of us marched down to the canoe
which had been brought round to the open waterway. Here we had to
undergo a kind of customs-house examination at the hands of Komba and
his companions, who seemed terrified lest we should be smuggling
firearms.
"You know what rifles are like," I said indignantly. "Can you see any
in our hands? Moreover, I give you my word that we have none."
Komba bowed politely, but suggested that perhaps some "little guns,"
by which he meant pistols, remained in our baggage--by accident. Komba
was a most suspicious person.
"Undo all the loads," I said to Hans, who obeyed with an enthusiasm
which I confess struck me as suspicious.
Knowing his secretive and tortuous nature, this sudden zeal for
openness seemed almost unnatural. He began by unrolling his own
blanket, inside of which appeared a miscellaneous collection of
articles. I remember among them a spare pair of very dirty trousers, a
battered tin cup, a wooden spoon such as Kaffirs use to eat their
/scoff/ with, a bottle full of some doubtful compound, sundry roots
and other native medicines, an old pipe I had given him, and last but
not least, a huge head of yellow tobacco in the leaf, of a kind that
the Mazitu, like the Pongos, cultivate to some extent.
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