When the log is raised to the height of the lower deck it is passed from one spar to another which is over the hatch, and sweeps across the deck, all the Kruboys at the same moment shouting for everybody to get out of the way; but no time is lost in waiting for them to obey the order. They dodge skillfully, however; for one is always dodging something in Africa, and there is seldom any accident. But terrible accidents have sometimes occurred down in the hold, during the hard work of stowing the logs so that every cubic foot of space may be occupied. I have also seen the steel cable break when a log weighing nearly two tons was suspended over the hatch. One thinks, of course, that all the Kruboys down in that dark hold are directly under the falling log, which is never the case, and the volume of vocal noise which ascends immediately afterwards is a great relief to the blood-curdled feelings of the spectator, for it indicates that nobody is missing. But the fright extends beyond one’s solicitude for the Kruboys. For it looks as if that log would plunge right through the bottom of the ship. One will discover, however, that it fell upon a bed of several logs carefully placed there against such an accident. But I have not yet told of the hardest and the bravest work of the Kruboy, a work for which few men anywhere in the world would have sufficient daring, namely, his landing of cargo through the surf in the season of the “calemma,” or great wave of the southwest coast. Twice I have gone far south of Gaboon when the sea was at the worst. Once I went as far as Benguela, in Angola, and again I visited the Congo. On the latter journey I was nearly five weeks on shipboard. The boat-boys are divided into crews according to the number of surf-boats in use. In a good sea a crew usually consists of seven men, six of whom use paddles, while the seventh, the headman, stands erect in the stern of the boat and steers with an oar attached to the stern. In a rough sea fewer boats are lowered and the crew is increased to as many as thirteen men. However long the day’s work or hard the battle with the sea, they sing to the last stroke, keeping time with their paddles to one of their strange, wild boat-songs. Sometimes the song has only rhythm and no melody, being a monotonous repetition of several notes: “So sah, so sooh, so sah, so sooh, so sah, so sooh, ad—zh! So sah, so sooh,” etc. The man who sings at his work will do more work in a given time and do it better. Not that the African is always a great worker. He is seldom that; but he does more work singing than he would do not singing. And he sings because, however wronged and oppressed, there is a freedom within him which the white man can never take away; a lightness of heart, a buoyancy of spirit intractable to tyranny.