as I was sinking a third time I caught hold of a bale of cloth which was floating on the surface of the water, and I held on to that. The paddlers all clung to the overturned canoe until the storm abated, and then they righted it, and we all got in again.’
‘Well,’ said his interrogator, ‘how about your clothes and books?’
‘Oh!’ he replied, ‘I lost them all. I have got nothing now but what you see me in.’ He did not ask for compensation. It had not occurred to him that he could get it if he did. Travelling in Africa is always liable to be accompanied with danger and loss, and natives think little or nothing of it.
On another occasion, a teacher trained as a schoolmaster for two years had progressed well with English, reading, writing, and arithmetic, and was known to be a thoroughly upright and reliable Christian. A Government officer offered him a clerkship in his office at a salary of £24 a year, with
