The recency of this occurrence made me, perhaps, more suspicious than usual, or qualified my courage, on the occasion of the canoe ride at Nenge Nenge. The men had all been drinking, which I did not observe until we had started, and they were all of one tribe, a distinct disadvantage to me if they should mean mischief. And what was worse, they were just fresh from a distant bush town, and never had been in contact with white men. The river is broad at this place, and the current is very swift. They first started to sing one of their wild and fascinating boat-songs, keeping time with the paddles. Then the leader began improvising, according to their custom, on the theme of the white man and the white man’s riches, the others responding with a refrain. They were gradually getting excited, and were swaying their bodies from side to side, so that I feared continually that the canoe would be capsized. Then the song became a yelling-match, and they were getting still more excited. I had never at any time had a more distinct feeling that I was in a dangerous company of real savages, fifteen to one, and if I had been in their musical mood I should have been singing Robert Louis Stevenson’s immortal buccaneer song: “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest— Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” Before we reached the most secluded part of the river, and while there was still a small town to be passed, I ordered the headman to go close into the bank away from the current until we should pass a turn in the river. When I came close to the bank I said I would land here. They knew, of course, that this was not my destination, and they supposed that I would continue the journey in a few minutes. But as soon as I had landed I ordered them back to Nenge Nenge, and I proceeded in a small canoe which I hired at the town near by. Thus I avoided the possibility of being cut off in the flower of my youth. Or, it may be that I missed an adventure that I should have been proud to tell afterwards.