The afternoon passed away, not tediously, though with little incident, for the leafy banks that slipped by so quietly, but swiftly, were so many milestones on the road to freedom; coming from ahead with friendly greeting, and passing astern with a silent God speed! And when the dull grey of the western sky turned to a duller crimson, I began to look about for an anchorage with a cheerful and thankful heart. For some reasons I would rather have drawn my canoe up on the shore for the night, but the overhanging banks were crumbling and unsafe, and the beasts of prey might prove dangerous. So I decided to anchor in the slackest water I could find, sufficiently far from the bank to be secure from nocturnal visitors. With this object I dropped the sinker and drifted down until, just round a sharp bend, I found a sheltered spot out of the main current. Here I was about to let go my anchor when I noticed a tall Odúm tree on the very edge of the bank--a highly undesirable neighbour at this season of the year--and remembering the tree I had passed earlier in the day, I let the canoe drift another fifty yards down; when, as the current was comparatively slight, I dropped anchor, and paid out a good length of the stout liana cable. It was with some trepidation that I checked the outrun of the cable, fearing that the prongs or flukes of the hard-wood grapnel might snap off; but they held quite securely, so I belayed the cable to its cleat, and hoisted the sinker, and, for the first time, my little ship rode to her anchor. There were but a few minutes of daylight left, and these I employed in critically watching the bank to see if the anchor dragged at all; but there was no sign of movement, and when I pulled on the cable, it seemed as firm as though there had been a fifty-pound Trotman at the end of it. So I set up the tilt, in case it should rain in the night, made a frugal supper of smoked meat, and, having spread the mats, lay down between the two rows of manillas. It was an odd sensation, but very pleasant and peaceful, to lie in that tiny cabin and listen to the water gurgling past outside the thin bark skin. But I did not listen long, for I had had no sleep on the previous night, and was tired out with the day’s exertions; and my head had rested but a few minutes on the pillow that I had hastily extemporised by wrapping an antelope’s ham in my _riga_, when I fell asleep.