About four o'clock in the afternoon
The passage of this part of the river occupied us until noon , and was rather trying to the nerves of all hands , for not only were we constantly exposed to attack by the slavers , but there were the natives also to be reckoned with ; and these , as we all knew , had a most objectionable habit of using poisoned arrows , the slightest wound from which was invariably followed by death after some eight to twelve hours of dreadful suffering . Shortly after noon we emerged from these natural entanglements into a long reach of the river where the stream expanded to a width of some three and a half miles , with a narrow deep-water channel running about midway between the banks . Here we were quite free from any possibility of ambush of any kind ; and with a sigh of intense relief the captain gave the word to pipe to dinner . About four o'clock in the afternoon we arrived at a point where the river again narrowed to a width of about a mile ; but some two miles farther on it again widened out , and changed its direction , trending away almost due east , or about at right angles to its former course ; and this , according to the information in the skipper 's possession , indicated that we were nearing our destination . Drawing from his pocket a sketch chart which he had already consulted several times during our passage up the river , he again studied it intently for several minutes , carefully comparing the configurations delineated upon it with our actual surroundings ; then , apparently satisfied with the result , he refolded the paper , returned it to his pocket , and directed the coxswain to bear away a couple of points toward a projecting point -- which we afterwards discovered to be the western extremity of an islet -- on the far side of the river . As we approached the spot for which we were heading it became apparent that there were two islets instead of one between us and the river bank ; and a quarter of an hour later the gig , with the rest of the flotilla following her , glided in between these two islets , and , lowering her sails , made the signal for the other boats to anchor . The boats were now completely concealed from all possible observation , for we soon saw that the islets between which we were anchored consisted merely of mud-banks thickly overgrown with mangroves , and absolutely uninhabitable even by natives ; for there did not appear to be an inch of ground upon either of the islets sufficiently solid to support even a reed hut , while the mangroves were tall enough and grew densely enough to hide the boats from all possible observation from the mainland .