blaze stood out the lakeward
boma wall. I stood due east away from it, and discovered presently
that by easing on the halyard so as to lower the long spar I could
obtain something the effect of reefing.

I set Fred and Will to making a sea-anchor of buckets and spars in case
the sail or rotten rigging should carry away, leaving us at the mercy
of the short steep waves that fresh-water lakes and the North Sea only
know. The big curved spar, now that it was hanging low, bucked and
swung and the dhow steered like an omnibus on slippery pavement.
Luckily, I had living ballast and could trim the ship how I chose.
They all began to grow seasick, but I gave them something to think
about by making them shift backward and forward and from side to side
until I found which way the dhow rode easiest.

When Fred had finished the sea-anchor he got out the tools and began
striking off the iron rings on the porters' necks through which the
chain passed. The job took him two hours, but at the end of it we
owned a good serviceable chain, and a crew that could be drilled to
take the brute hard labor off our shoulders.

Coutlass meanwhile was busy on the seat in the stern beside me making
Hellenic inflammatory love to Lady Waldon's maid, whom he had wrapped
in his own blanket and held shivering in his arms. Lady Waldon herself
sat on the other side of me, affecting not to be aware of the existence
of either of them. The other Greek and the Goanese had been driven
below, where they started to smoke until I saw the glow of their pipes
and shouted to Will to stop that foolishness. He snatched both pipes
and threw them overboard. The thought of being seen from shore was
almost incitement enough for murder. They refused to turn a hand to
anything that night, but sat sulking below the sloping roof of reeds
and tarpaulin that did duty for a deck, wedged alongside of seasick
Wanyamwezi.

It was Kazimoto who chose the least disheartened of the gang, beat them
and stung them into liveliness, and set them to bailing. There was a
trough running thwartwise of the ship into which the water had to be
lifted from the midship well. It took the gang of eight men, working
in relays, until nearly dawn to get the water out of her; and to keep
her bottom reasonably dry after that two men working constantly.

I knew vaguely that the great island of Ukerewe lay to the
northwestward of us. Between that and the mainland, running roughly
north, was