"I naturally concluded that you were all busy at work--the same as me. How the blazes do you expect us to get this job done if you behave in this demoralizing way?"
"Ah! This is a brain-wave. Dr. Croft and I thought it out this morning and acted on it there and then."
Gran'pa turned off the engine and stepped ashore.
"Those damned natives are getting sick of work," he said. "This morning they were worse than ever. We offered 'em more cheap and nasty jewelry. But they've lost interest in it. They're overloaded with the stuff. So we cudgelled our brains, and this is the result. At heart they're little children. What they want is enjoyment, not gimcrack knickknacks. This little exhibition of aquatic merriment has turned their heads. Look at them! . . . They'd give anything for a joy-ride on this. See the idea?"
"You mean that excursions on this horrible contrivance will be their reward for industry?"
"You've hit it first time, my lad. For every day of good hard, honest toil they'll get fifteen minutes' excitement round the harbor. And I'll stake my last farthing that when they know, we shall be simply besieged with applicants for jobs."
I began divesting myself of my unnecessary and encumbering garments.
"You're a genius!" I said, as I scrambled aboard. "Let her rip!"
The contrivance on which I managed to secure a perilous foothold was a rough, heart-shaped raft, with a long, narrow, rectangular hole cut between the bows. It was through this hole that the water presently began shooting upwards and backwards in a deliciously cool spray. The engine--taken from an old petrol launch which Gran'pa had bought a few days previously at Libreville--was encased in a water-tight covering made of aeroplane fabric stretched over a metal framework. Between this and the rudder was a vertical board which could be alternately lowered into and raised out of the water, this giving our craft the motion of a greyhound leaping in the chase. One maintained (or tried to maintain) one's balance by standing with the feet well apart and clutching a couple of the half dozen ropes fastened at one end to the deck.
Bathed in sunshine and falling water, Gran'pa and I shot outwards into the little blue bay, where he began frisking and seesawing, to the immense enjoyment of ourselves and the spectators. They lined the beach in hundreds, and shouted themselves hoarse with glee (and envy!).