Messagerie boat which they had to cross
to reach her.

She was a palatial cruising yacht of twelve hundred tons' burden, built
somewhat on the lines of Drexel's _La Margharita_, but with less width of
funnel.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon when they went on board; all the
luggage had arrived, steam was up, the port arrangements had been made,
and Berselius determined to start at once.

Maxine kissed him, then she turned to Adams.

"_Bon voyage._"

"Good-bye," said Adams.

He held her hand for a fraction of a second after his grasp had relaxed.

Then she was standing on the deck of the Messagerie boat, waving good-bye
across the lane of blue water widening between _La Joconde_ and her berth
mate.

At the harbour mouth, looking back across the blue wind-swept water, he
fancied he could still see her, a microscopic speck in the great picture
of terraced Marseilles, with its windows, houses, flags, and domes
glittering and burning in the sun.

Then the swell of the Gulf of Lyons took _La Joconde_ as a nurse takes an
infant and rocks it on her knee, and France and civilization were slowly
wrapped from sight under the veils of distance.

PART TWO

CHAPTER VI

MATADI

It was evening. _La Joconde_, Berselius's yacht, lay moored at the wharf
of Matadi; warpling against the starboard plates, whimpering, wimpling,
here smooth as glass, here eddied and frosted, a sea of golden light, a
gliding mirror, went the Congo.

A faint, faint haze dulled the palms away on the other side; from the
wharf, where ships were loading up with rubber, ivory, palm-oil, and bales
of gum copal, the roar and rattle of steam-winches went across the water,
far away across the glittering water, where the red flamingoes were
flying, to that other shore where the palm trees showed their fringe of
hot and hazy green.

The impression of heat which green, the coolest of all colours, can
produce, damp heat, heart-weakening heat, that is the master impression
produced by the Congo on the mind of man. All the other impressions
are--to paraphrase Thenard--embroideries on this.

Yet how many other impressions there are! The Congo is Africa in a frank
mood. Africa, laying her hand on her heart and speaking, or rather,
whispering the truth.

This great river flooding from Stanley Pool and far away beyond, draws
with it, like a moving dream, the pictures of the roaring rapids and the
silent pools, the swamps filled with darkness of