T. Boyle - Water Music

The explorer was in a quandary. Should he wait on Mansong’s pleasure while the river sank and the Muslim merchants agitated against him? Should he up the bribe? Hire the Somonies to take him to Djenné and try his luck there? Swim for it? Unfortunately, the strain of it all brought on the fever again and he was incoherent for two days, jabbering about the Baroness’ cleavage and Lady Banks’ pug, about the strength of his arm and the accuracy of his kick on goal, and how the name of Park would live on in history, greater than any other. When he came round again, he dosed himself so heavily with calomel he was unable to eat or sleep for a week. It was during this rushing, whirling period of acceleration and intense stimulation that he hit on the idea of reverting to the original plan and constructing his own vessel, despite the obvious limitations imposed on him by lack of materials and skilled artisans.

Seized by the idea, he sprang out of his bed like a mastiff and strode into the tent where the surviving carpenter lay in his delirium. “Joshua Seed,” the explorer boomed like a god, “get up from your sickbed and build me a boat.”

The sick man held out a little packet of bony knuckles and Mungo helped him from his cot. In the hulks at Portsmouth, Seed had impressed the explorer with his work-hardened frame and the clarity of his eye. Now he looked and moved like an elderly gentleman with bowel problems. Slack-shouldered, yellow of eye and drawn in the cheeks. Seed shuffled out of the tent and into the blistering sunshine that had succeeded the rains. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and hobbled resolutely to the mound of nails, rusted saw, hammers, adzes and chisels that had survived the trip, and began pounding away at the scraps of wood that were scattered about.

He was at it all afternoon, periodically calling for more lumber. The explorer was delighted. He returned to his tent, fed the chickens, scribbled in his notebook and spat on the floor. At six, he stepped outside to see how Seed was progressing and was surprised to see that the carpenter had attracted a sizable crowd of inquisitive natives with his hammering and sawing, his meticulous measuring and planing and fitting. Mungo elbowed his way through the crowd, careful to avoid trampling any native feet, and was about to call out cheerfully to Seed — something like ‘How’s it coming, old boy?’—when he stopped dead in his tracks, choked with incredulity. Seed was working all right, whistling away as if he didn’t have a care in the world, smoothing a corner here, shaving back a splinter there. He was working, but he wasn’t building a boat. He was building a coffin.

Seed was gone by sundown. The explorer eased the late carpenter into his casket, paid a pair of Kafir Mandingoes to dig a hole, and buried him without ceremony. Boatwise, things looked pretty bleak. But it was at that moment — that very moment when Mungo pitched the first spadeful of earth into the grave — that Ned Rise waltzed into camp preceded by the dark, glistening, water-burnished hulls of two sleek native canoes that seemed to float on the air like gifts from the gods. With a grunt, the eight black porters flipped the big dugouts from their shoulders and set them down on the ground as lightly as if they’d been made of pasteboard. The explorer was ecstatic. He embraced Ned as if he were a long-lost son, slapping his back with both hands and smothering him with praise and promises of medals, plaques, awards and pecuniary largesse on their return to England. Then he looked at the canoes.

They were rotted through, both of them. Mud, river plants and expiring minnows lined the insides of their hulls, and a gargantuan bite had been taken out of the gunwale of the smaller craft, testimony to some historical confrontation with an irate hippo. In sum, the canoes looked as if they’d been constructed sometime during the reign of Charles I, and had been left to rot ever since. The calomel twitched Mungo’s salivary glands, his lower lip fell, and he began to drool. “What is this, Ned?” he choked, unable to contain his disappointment. “Any fool can see that these are worthless hulks.”

Ned was grinning. He’d found the canoes in a heap of river-run lumber at the edge of town. They were half submerged, waterlogged and rotting. No one owned them. He dragged them from the river, inspected them closely and decided they were worth a try. For fifty cowries apiece, he was able to hire the eight local flaneurs who balanced the boats on their broad flat heads and hauled them into camp. “Maybe we could fix them,” he said finally. The explorer looked doubtful. “No, I mean it,” Ned said. “Look,” bending now to the slippery green hull of the larger boat, “the front half of this one isn’t all that bad. . and take a look at that one with the toothmarks. The back of that one seems pretty sturdy, no?”

The explorer looked. He was wired and jumpy with the tasteless white powder he’d taken to scourge himself of the fever. A tentative leg snaked out to thump the hull of the smaller craft. He went down on his knees, smoothing his hand over the wood like a furniture appraiser. Then he turned to squint up at Ned. “You mean. . we could join the two of them?”

♦ ♦ ♦

Ned snapped a hand to his brow and clicked his heels. “Splendid idea, Captain.”

The H.M.S. Joliba , flying the British colors, was loaded and ready to sail by the fifteenth of November. In a short month, the increasingly lucid explorer, aided by Ned Rise, Fred Frair and Abraham Bolton, had managed to put together a reasonably seaworthy craft, forty feet long by six wide, flat-bottomed and drawing no more than twelve inches of water when fully loaded (Martyn and M’Keal declined to help, reasoning that they’d signed on as military men—”men o’ the sword”—rather than laborers). A rusted spike projected from the front of the Joliba ’s bow like a rugbyman’s stiff-arm, and a canopy constructed of bent branches and a double layer of tanned bullock hide stretched half the length of the craft. The canopy would provide shade and shelter, and the hide was impervious to any of the slings and arrows that might come Mungo’s way as he cruised down the mighty Niger into the unknown and almost certainly hostile regions to the east.

In addition, the explorer had taken some offensive measures as well, ordering windows cut at intervals in the bullock hide so that his men could fire from cover if necessary, and providing each of his remaining soldiers with fifteen new Charleville muskets which were to be kept primed, cocked and loaded day and night. This time, Mungo Park would stop for no one — neither Moor nor Maniana, nor any other disagreeable characters he might encounter along the way. No, if the watchword of the first expedition was to turn the other cheek, the motto this time around would be guerra cominciata, inferno scatenato : war commenced, hell unchained.

It was at about this time, when the boat was caulked, battened and provisioned, and the explorer clearing up his affairs at Sansanding, that he had his falling out with Johnson.

♦ YOUR OWN GOOD SENSE ♦

“I don’t like it,” Johnson had said when they reached Sansanding. “You sure you want to go through with this?” he asked as the boat began to take shape. And finally, when the Joliba was ready to set sail, he took the explorer aside and said: “You’re crazy.”

Now, on the eve of their departure, he stepped into Mungo’s tent and announced that he was turning back. “This is it,” he said. “The last time I ever lay eyes on you. No more shit, Mungo. No more Isaaco, no more Mr. Park. This is Johnson speaking — your old friend and companion, your advisor — and I say you ought to reconsider. I say don’t go.”