of the workmen regard it as a bluff. All the workmen excepting Makuba besought me to give back the captured gun and stop the palaver. I brought them into my house that night; but Makuba with the rifle in his hand insisted upon keeping watch, and walked before my door the whole night. The matter of his stolen goods and his personal danger were quite forgotten in absorbing anxiety for the white man’s safety. I may add that I cut off all communication with the people, refusing to buy their supplies of food, or to open the store, until after several days they returned the stolen goods, and the palaver was finished. A short time after this I made Makuba the captain of the boat crew. He knew the sea, and everything about boats and was perfectly trustworthy. But these qualifications are more common in Africa than the faculty of discipline and command which is by no means common. Makuba was not altogether wanting in talent for discipline, but when this proved insufficient he procured obedience to his orders by diplomacy and argument; and for that matter, the greatest sea-captain dispenses with argument only because he is given authority to punish and to put in irons, which requires no talent at all. But all Makuba’s resources of discipline and diplomacy were taxed when I hired Obianga, a young man of the Fang, whose home was near Angom. Poor Obianga is dead; and I would not make cheap jokes at his expense. He was like a wild unbroken colt, full of life, willing to work, and not lazy, but resentful of the bit and reins of authority. For any man, especially one of another tribe, to give him an order was equivalent to calling him a slave; and, representative of his tribe, he seemed ever to be saying: “We were never in bondage to any man.” When Makuba would shout an order to him, however urgent, even if a tempest were approaching, Obianga would perhaps tell him to “shut up.” Then we usually improvised a little tempest on our own account, Makuba’s indignation being the turbulent factor. But in milder weather he would try persuasion and various expedients, old and new, always prevailing in the end. I never interfered in these altercations, though I sometimes reckoned with the offender when the journey was over. More than once Makuba asked me to dismiss Obianga, but I would not; for I liked him and felt that there was in him the raw material for an excellent man. Then, too, I remembered that I once dismissed another man upon Makuba’s urgent and repeated request, and no sooner did Makuba hear of it than he came to me begging me to take the man on again, saying that he himself had been too impatient, reminding me also that the man had a wife and child, and promising that if I would take him back he would not complain of him again. Of course I took him back; and Makuba kept his word.