Should anything untoward occur to delay us, it is the skipper who will be blamed. He is expected to be in time for whatever is to be transferred from his boat to the homeward-bound liner. If he does not maintain that time-table he must give a good reason why; it must be a very good reason. Still worse is it for his reputation if he runs aground. That may be no fault of his; still, he is judged from results. There is nothing like being careful; an excess of that quality, however, means that dovetailed arrangements and schedules are put out of gear. Whatever difficulties or obstacles come in the path of a skipper of a large stern-wheeler on the Niger—and many do—in thinking how to overcome any one of them he can always murmur truthfully, as did Desdemona, “I do perceive here a divided duty.” Steadily, yet with unrelaxed caution, paddling, the miles between us and our goal are reduced one by one, until, at nearly 10 o’clock, in the distance there is a cluster of white specks, too bright to be stars. As we move onwards it becomes plain they are the electric lights on the wharf at Burutu. Half-an-hour more and we are up to them and at anchor. It seems we have suddenly sailed into a new world, or, rather, into the old, strenuous, restless world again. The long rows of large sheds, the big arc lamps and the smaller ones together throwing a glare half-way across the river, and the wide-funnel ocean ships and others of lesser degree clustered, all tell you are at a large shipping port planted in West Africa. Nearly everybody ashore has gone to bed, but Captain Stephenson promptly reports his arrival to Mr Price, the Burutu Agent of the Niger Company, and word is brought back from him that the _Mungo Park_ is to leave at 6 a.m. for Forcados, so that anybody who desires to land at Burutu must do so before that hour next morning. CHAPTER XL BURUTU A port in a swamp—Training native engineers—A composite village—Social grades—Medical provision—Mr John Burns on a Nigerian river—Back to the sea. Burutu, like Forcados, five miles lower down the Niger, was a mere mangrove swamp, a forlorn no-man’s land. It has been reclaimed by the Niger Company for headquarters, and is now a bustling, thriving spot, large enough to be termed, by comparison, a small Glasgow in West Africa. It has most of the characteristics of a port. On the 3,000 feet frontage two ocean liners can lie end-on—there is always one berthed—and seven of the eight hatches simultaneously discharging or loading; smaller craft—branch boats of 1,000 tons to stern-wheelers and launches for river traffic—are continuously bringing produce and passengers and taking up country small goods, among which bags of salt occupy an important place; whilst the coal wharf knows no rest. Awaiting shipment are 7,000 casks of palm-oil. Recently there were 10,000.