which best suited the African Queen’s delicate digestion. Allnutt brought loads of it down to the boat, and to eke out this supply the slack water above the shore end of the dam was thick with sticks and logs brought down from above and caught up here. Allnutt fished out a great mass of it and left it to drain on the steep rocky side; by next morning it would be ready for use in the furnace, if helped out with plenty of the dry stuff.
Rose, in fact, had been really fortunate in finding the African Queen ready to her hand. The steam launch with all its defects possessed a self-contained mobility denied to any other method of transport. No gang of carriers in the forest could compare with her. Had she been fitted with an internal combustion engine she could not have carried sufficient liquid fuel for two days’ running. As it was, taking her water supply from overside and sure of finding sufficient combustibles on shore, she was free of the two overwhelming difficulties which at that very moment were hampering the Emden in the Indian Ocean and were holding the Königsberg useless and quiescent in the Rufiji delta. Regarded as the captain of a raiding cruiser, Rose was happily situated. She had overcome her difficulties with her crew, and the stock of provisions heaped up in the bows showed as yet hardly a sign of diminution. She had only navigational difficulties to contend with; difficulties represented by the rocks and rapids of the lower Ulanga.
For the present neither Rose nor Allnutt cared about navigational difficulties in the future. They were content with what they had done that day. Nor did they moralize about the African Queen’s peculiar advantages. The everlasting roar of water in their ears was unfavourable to continuous thought, and rendered conversation quite impossible. They could only grin at each other to indicate their satisfaction, and eat enormously, and swill tea in vast mugs with lots of condensed milk and sugar—Rose found herself craving for sugar after the excitement of the day, and, significantly enough, made no effort to combat the craving. She had forgotten at the moment that any desire of the body should be suspect and treated as an instigation of the devil.
Freedom and responsibility and an open-air life and a foretaste of success were working wonders on her. She had spent ten years in Africa, but those ten years, immured in a dark bungalow, with hardly anyone save Samuel to talk to, had no more forwarded her development than ten years in a nunnery would have done. She had lived in subjection all her life, and subjection offers small scope to personality. And no woman with Rose’s upbringing could live for ten days in a small boat with a man—even a man like Allnutt—without broadening her ideas and smoothing away the jagged corners and becoming something more like a human being. These last ten days had brought her into flower.
Those big breasts of hers, which had begun to sag when she had begun to lapse into spinsterhood, were firm and upstanding now again, and she could look down on them swelling out the bosom of her white drill frock without misgiving. Even in these ten days her body had done much towards replacing fat where fat should be and eliminating it from those areas where it should not. Her face had filled out, and though there were puckers round her eyes caused by the sun, they went well with her healthy tan, and lent piquancy to the ripe femininity of her body. She drank her tea with her mouth full, in a way which would have horrified her a month back.
When their stomachs were full, the excitement and fatigue of the day began to take effect. Their eyelids began to droop and their heads began to nod even as they sat with their dishes on their knees. The delicious coolness of the gorge played its part. Down between those lofty cliffs darkness came imperceptibly; they were once more in a land where there was twilight. Rose actually found herself nodding off fast asleep while
Rose, in fact, had been really fortunate in finding the African Queen ready to her hand. The steam launch with all its defects possessed a self-contained mobility denied to any other method of transport. No gang of carriers in the forest could compare with her. Had she been fitted with an internal combustion engine she could not have carried sufficient liquid fuel for two days’ running. As it was, taking her water supply from overside and sure of finding sufficient combustibles on shore, she was free of the two overwhelming difficulties which at that very moment were hampering the Emden in the Indian Ocean and were holding the Königsberg useless and quiescent in the Rufiji delta. Regarded as the captain of a raiding cruiser, Rose was happily situated. She had overcome her difficulties with her crew, and the stock of provisions heaped up in the bows showed as yet hardly a sign of diminution. She had only navigational difficulties to contend with; difficulties represented by the rocks and rapids of the lower Ulanga.
For the present neither Rose nor Allnutt cared about navigational difficulties in the future. They were content with what they had done that day. Nor did they moralize about the African Queen’s peculiar advantages. The everlasting roar of water in their ears was unfavourable to continuous thought, and rendered conversation quite impossible. They could only grin at each other to indicate their satisfaction, and eat enormously, and swill tea in vast mugs with lots of condensed milk and sugar—Rose found herself craving for sugar after the excitement of the day, and, significantly enough, made no effort to combat the craving. She had forgotten at the moment that any desire of the body should be suspect and treated as an instigation of the devil.
Freedom and responsibility and an open-air life and a foretaste of success were working wonders on her. She had spent ten years in Africa, but those ten years, immured in a dark bungalow, with hardly anyone save Samuel to talk to, had no more forwarded her development than ten years in a nunnery would have done. She had lived in subjection all her life, and subjection offers small scope to personality. And no woman with Rose’s upbringing could live for ten days in a small boat with a man—even a man like Allnutt—without broadening her ideas and smoothing away the jagged corners and becoming something more like a human being. These last ten days had brought her into flower.
Those big breasts of hers, which had begun to sag when she had begun to lapse into spinsterhood, were firm and upstanding now again, and she could look down on them swelling out the bosom of her white drill frock without misgiving. Even in these ten days her body had done much towards replacing fat where fat should be and eliminating it from those areas where it should not. Her face had filled out, and though there were puckers round her eyes caused by the sun, they went well with her healthy tan, and lent piquancy to the ripe femininity of her body. She drank her tea with her mouth full, in a way which would have horrified her a month back.
When their stomachs were full, the excitement and fatigue of the day began to take effect. Their eyelids began to droop and their heads began to nod even as they sat with their dishes on their knees. The delicious coolness of the gorge played its part. Down between those lofty cliffs darkness came imperceptibly; they were once more in a land where there was twilight. Rose actually found herself nodding off fast asleep while
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