"You've hit it first time, my lad. For every day of good hard, honest toil they'll get fifteen minutes' excitement round the harbor. And I'll stake my last farthing that when they know, we shall be simply besieged with applicants for jobs." I began divesting myself of my unnecessary and encumbering garments. "You're a genius!" I said, as I scrambled aboard. "Let her rip!" The contrivance on which I managed to secure a perilous foothold was a rough, heart-shaped raft, with a long, narrow, rectangular hole cut between the bows. It was through this hole that the water presently began shooting upwards and backwards in a deliciously cool spray. The engine--taken from an old petrol launch which Gran'pa had bought a few days previously at Libreville--was encased in a water-tight covering made of aeroplane fabric stretched over a metal framework. Between this and the rudder was a vertical board which could be alternately lowered into and raised out of the water, this giving our craft the motion of a greyhound leaping in the chase. One maintained (or tried to maintain) one's balance by standing with the feet well apart and clutching a couple of the half dozen ropes fastened at one end to the deck. Bathed in sunshine and falling water, Gran'pa and I shot outwards into the little blue bay, where he began frisking and seesawing, to the immense enjoyment of ourselves and the spectators. They lined the beach in hundreds, and shouted themselves hoarse with glee (and envy!). "Like it, George?" cried Gran'pa, as we playfully leapt half out of the water. "Rather! Why even I would do a day's work for a joy-ride like this every afternoon!" We slowed down and picked up Croft and Stringer. But with four of us aboard the thing became top-heavy and cumbersome. So we made for land. There, Gran'pa explained to the crowding and excited negroes the new system of payment for labor; and, as a proof of good faith (and an advertisement), he took our black foreman for a little jaunt round the harbor. Ten minutes later the poor fellow came back absolutely delirious with joy. Thus did we solve the great labor question in Corisco. . . . It proved more satisfactory to our employees than any system of profit-sharing, coöperation, or payment by result ever devised, and it was certainly cheaper for the employer. The work was now done so thoroughly and speedily that in less than another week we were ready for our first real invasion of the jungle.