The low shores, with
their cocoanut groves gracefully rising above the mangrove tangle,
slipped by, and the distant blue Shimba Hills came nearer.
After a while we turned into a narrower channel with a good many curves
and a quite unknown depth of water. Down this we whooped at the full
speed of our thirty-horsepower engine. Occasional natives, waist deep
and fishing, stared after us open-eyed. The Yankee ventured a guess as
to how hard she would hit on a mudbank. She promptly proved his guess a
rank underestimate by doing so. We fell in a heap on the bottom. The
dhow bore down on us with majestic momentum. The boat boys leaned
frantically on their sweeps, and managed just to avoid us. The dhow also
rammed the mudbank. A dozen reluctant boys hopped overboard and pushed
us off. We pursued our merry way again. On either hand now appeared fish
weirs of plaited coco fibre; which, being planted in the shallows,
helped us materially to guess at the channel. Naked men, up to their
shoulders in the water, attended to some mysterious need of the nets, or
emerged dripping and sparkling from the water with baskets of fish atop
their heads. The channel grew even narrower, and the mudbanks more
frequent. We dodged a dozen in our headlong course. Our local guide, a
Swahili in tarboosh and a beautiful saffron robe, showed signs of strong
excitement. We were to stop, he said, around the next bend; and at this
rate we never could stop.
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