IN WHICH I SET OUT FOR AFRICA.
It was a soft sunny morning when, some ten days later, I stood on
the white deck of the _Lady Jane_, taking, very earnestly, and indeed
with unexpected emotion, my last look at the town and harbour of
Ramsgate.
The brig lay at the mouth of the eastern entrance to the basin, and
already, with the gentle northerly breeze filling her broad white
topsails, she was beginning to tug impatiently at the great hawser by
which she was tethered to a stone post on the quay. On board all was
bustle and apparent confusion. Chain sheets rattled, blocks squealed,
coils of rope thumped on the deck, and the branch pilot rushed about
the vessel, as Moloney said, “like a dog at a fair”; while on the
quay, a stout red-jowled harbour official stood and bellowed
unceasingly--apparently from sheer excess of animal spirits.
“Are ye all clear there?” shouted the pilot, darting on to the
forecastle to take a last look at the head-sails. “Are ye all clear
aft--here, you! leave that trys’l be--we don’t want him yet. Are ye
all clear?”
“All clear,” growled the mate.
“Cast off the sternfast, Mr. Giles,” roared the pilot, and the
official, having deliberately hitched the great bowline off the post,
announced that it was “All gone” in a voice like the report of a
forty-eight pounder.
As the hawser fell with a splash into the water, the quay with the
little crowd of onlookers began slowly to move away--as it seemed to
me; and as the brig gathered way the whole scene around seemed to
glide past like the shifting picture from a magic lantern. All the
familiar objects--the clock tower, the row of freshly-painted buoys on
the quay, the sun-lighted obelisk and the tall church steeple, the
tide ball up on the cliff and the crowded masts in the basin, began to
fade away and grow small in the increasing distance; while a musical
tinkle arose from under the vessel’s bows, and the water astern began
to be dimpled with eddies and tiny whirlpools. Then for a moment the
lighthouse loomed up high above our deck, and the grey pier heads,
lined with a throng of gaily-dressed girls, slipped quietly by and,
leaving the dead water of the harbour, we met the soft swell of the
bay, which the _Lady Jane_ saluted with a stately curtsey.
I stood by the taffrail gazing, with my heart in my mouth, at the
receding land, the clustering town above the white cliff--now grown so
strangely dear--and the dwindling harbour, and rapidly reviewing the
events that had occurred since my momentous meeting with Captain
Bithery.
What a time it had been! How I had rushed off on the following morning
to emancipate myself from the thraldom of Jobson’s! With what glee I
had run up to London, on the Captain’s advice, to buy an outfit for
the voyage, and how I had swaggered down the Minories with the rolling
gait of a seasoned buccaneer, followed by a porter staggering under
the burden of a colossal seaman’s chest. How the said chest had been
triumphantly flung open in the _Lady Jane’s_ cabin and made to
disgorge piles of storm suits, sail needles, palms, jumpers,
dungarees, marlin-spikes, boat compasses, sheath knives, pistols,
until the Captain fell back on the locker and fairly shouted with
laughter. All these things surged through my mind until the voice of
the branch pilot wishing the Captain a pleasant voyage as he stepped
down into his boat, recalled me to the fact that our voyage was really
begun and that the wide ocean lay before us.
On the incidents of the voyage it is not my intention to dwell. It was
on the whole an eminently prosperous voyage, and for that very reason
singularly devoid of incident, although to me, fresh from the grinding
routine of an office, every minute of the day brought with it
something new, surprising and delightful. For hours at a time would I
pace the heaving deck listening to the song of the breeze as it hummed
through the rigging or murmured in the hollows of the sails; gazing
with unwearied eyes at the ever new prospect of sunny sky and
incredibly blue sea that stretched away on all sides like a moving
mass of liquid sapphire. The dainty pink “Portuguese men of war” that
drifted past in endless processions, and the fantastic forms of the
flying fish, were wonders that never staled; the porpoises that
gambolled around our bows seemed like the creatures from some Eastern
fable, while at night, the glitter of the moonbeams on the water and
the sparkle of the Noctiluca in the vessel’s shadow furnished visions
of beauty beyond my wildest dreams.
Yet, novel and delightful as it was to me, the voyage was, as I have
said, quite uneventful. The north-easterly breeze with which we
started carried us to the chops of the Channel, and then veering round
to the south-west gave us a fortnight of what the Captain grumblingly
described as “wind-jamming.” At length, as we approached the thirtieth
parallel, we felt the first breath of the north-east trade wind, and
thereafter a fresh draught poured constantly over our quarter until we
were well south of the latitude of Cape Verde. In all this time the
only land we sighted was the peak of Teneriffe, which one day lay on
the extreme verge of the horizon and which I at first took to be a
bank of cloud.
One morning when we were between five and six weeks out, on coming out
of my berth I found the Captain seated at the table thoughtfully
contemplating a perspiring slab of corned pork which lay before him,
while he slowly stirred his coffee.
“You lazy dog,” he said, smiling pleasantly nevertheless as I entered,
and pushing the dish of sliced pork over to the place where my plate
was set. “You idle ruffian, do you know that it’s nearly two bells and
that we made the land at daybreak?”
“Made the land!” I exclaimed excitedly. “Why, I didn’t know you
expected to see land for another week.”
“We might have seen it any time this last ten days, for we’ve been
sailing parallel to the coast ever since we rounded Cape Palmas, and
never much more than twenty miles off.”
“Whereabouts are we now?” I asked.
“Just passing Cape St. Paul. Oh, you needn’t excite yourself,” for I
was rising to go on deck, “there’s nothing to see, only a thin grey
line with a few cocoa nuts like pins stuck into the horizon. It’s a
scurvy-looking coast, this.”
“When do you expect to make your port?” I inquired eagerly.
“Port!” he exclaimed contemptuously, “there are no ports here, my lad;
just open roadsteads with a swell that’s enough to roll the sticks out
of a vessel, and a surf pounding the beach that would kick the
stuffing out of an Institution lifeboat.”
“That’s jolly,” I remarked.
“Ah, you’ll say so when you have to go ashore through it. But to
return to the ‘port’ question; we shall be off Quittáh in about an
hour--sit down, man, for God’s sake! and drink your coffee like a
Christian--and as a good bit of the cargo is going ashore there, we
shall have our anchor down maybe for a week or two.”
I took a gulp at the hot coffee and began to stow away the corned pork
and biscuit with a speed that did not escape the Captain’s notice, for
he remarked with a grin:
“Don’t gobble your grub like that, Englefield. Africa’ll keep, never
fear. Besides, lad, I want to have a bit of serious talk with you.”
I slowed down my mastication and indicated that I was all attention.
“Well, now,” said the Captain, “you remember what I told you about
this trip--that our business was more to trade than to carry freight.
We’ve got some tons of stuff for a merchant here in Quittáh--a
Portuguese named Pereira--and a biggish consignment for a German down
at Bagidá; but more than half the cargo is our own, and we’ve got to
turn our goods into produce by trading on our own hook. Well, you see,
most of the trading has got to be done ashore, for the niggers won’t
bring their produce on board through the surf, nor will they come on
board to buy our stuff when there are stores ashore where they can
buy, so the governor has made arrangements with Pereira to hire a
store at Quittáh by the lagoon side close to the market place, and I
have got to stock that store--or factory, as they call it out
here--with trade goods and put somebody in charge of it to sell the
goods and buy the produce.
“Now, my lad, you’re very useful to me on board ship; you can take
your trick at the wheel with any of them, and you can go aloft and
hand a sail if need be, but, thanks to the Boss we’re not short-handed
aboard, whereas we _are_ a trifle short for the shore work. So I’ve
been wondering whether you’d care to take a spell ashore and look
after the factory for a while. It would be a bit of a change for you,
and you’d make something in the way of commission, besides seeing the
country, which you seem anxious to do.”
“Of course, I know nothing about the trade,” I objected.
“Of course you don’t; but I can very soon put you up to all that you
need know. You’ll have the store well stocked with Manchester goods,
gin, guns, powder, knives, beads, and trash of that kind, and you’ll
have a chest of cash, say a hundred pounds--all in silver and mostly
in threepenny bits (for the niggers won’t touch copper money, and
don’t understand anything but a dollar or a threepenny piece) to carry
on with. When the bush niggers come in with their produce, you’ll buy
it at a fixed rate and take all of it that you can get--palm oil,
kernels, copra, rubber (especially rubber), ground nuts and any
oddments, such as scrivelloes, ebony or copal, that may turn up. Then,
when you have bought them out, you’ll let ’em browse about the store
and look at your goods, and you’ll have to keep your weather eye
lifting so that they don’t hook the toys and mizzle without paying. If
you work ’em properly they’ll spend all you’ve paid ’em for the
produce, and go off as pleased as Punch with their cargo of gimcracks.
I know what you’re thinking,” he continued, seeing that I hung back.
“You don’t consider it quite the ticket for a gentleman to sell gin to
a parcel of naked niggers.”
I laughed and perhaps reddened a little, for he had pretty accurately
gauged my thoughts.
“I expect it’s pretty awful stuff,” I said evasively.
“There you are wrong,” he replied. “Cheap it is--I shouldn’t like to
tell you what we gave for it at Hamburg--but it is as good gin as you
could wish to drink, supposing you wished to drink any at all. The
mystery is how they do it at the price. And as to serving in the
factory, I am sure you needn’t mind that; every produce buyer has to
do it, and there are some excellent fellows in the trade. But turn it
over and let me know what you think about it, and let us go on deck
and have a look round.”
The scene on deck betokened the occurrence of something unusual, for
the whole ship’s company was assembled, the men gathered in a little
knot on the forecastle and the two mates pacing the poop in earnest
conversation, all eyes being directed over the port bow where a
stretch of low land was visible at a distance of some three miles.
Above the lee bulwark the head of Moloney was visible as he stood in
the main chains heaving the hand-lead, and his faithful companion, the
cat, sat on the rail above him and gravely superintended the
operation.
“Whisht!” whistled Moloney as he whirled the lead round. “Will ye take
that black chuckle-head of yourn out of the road before ye get it
knocked off;” then as the lead plumped into the water and he gathered
up the slack of the line, he sang out in his mellow Irish baritone:
“By the deep--eight.”
Six weeks of unvaried sea and sky makes the sight of any land welcome,
and so we all gazed shoreward with a feeling of pleasure, although we
looked upon nothing more than the ill-omened coast of the Bight of
Benin.
And an agreeable enough picture it made, with the deep blue sky, the
bright yellow streak of beach lace-edged with a white fringe of surf,
and the low-lying land covered with dense soft-looking foliage of dark
bluish green.
“That’s Jellah-Coffee that we’re passing now,” said the Captain,
pointing to what looked like a large park or wood, “all cocoa nuts,
thousands of palms--we ought to get some copra from there.”
“How far is Quittáh from here?” I asked.
“There it is,” he replied, pointing to another grove of vegetation a
mile or so further east; “we shall open the fort in a few minutes.”
We continued to approach the land obliquely, guided by Moloney’s
probings of the deep and taking in sail by degrees, until the veil of
foliage rolling aside disclosed a white building of some size, above
which I made out with my glasses the Union Jack fluttering from a tall
flagstaff. At this moment Moloney sang out, with some emphasis, as I
thought, “Quarter less--six,” on which the brig’s head was put up into
the wind and the anchor chain rattled out through the hawse-pipe for
the first time since we sailed out of Ramsgate harbour.
That afternoon, as the Captain had to go ashore to transact some
business with the District Commissioner, relating to the duties on our
part of the cargo, he proposed that I should accompany him that I
might see some of the sights of Quittáh and make the acquaintance of
Pereira. To this I readily agreed, and soon after lunch the skipper
and I took our seats in a couple of Madeira chairs that were lashed to
the thwarts of a surf-boat that Pereira had sent out for us in charge
of his coloured agent, a dark mulatto named Isaac Vanderpuye. By
Vanderpuye we were assured that the surf was as quiet as a lamb
to-day, which gave me the impression that the African lamb must be a
beast of an exceedingly boisterous temperament, for after being most
infernally buffeted and shaken up by the heavy swell we were finally
shot out on the beach drenched to the skin with salt water.
The glare on the beach was blinding and the heat terrific, for the dry
sand was so baked by the sun that the air rose from it all in a
tremble, but after a few minutes’ laborious scrambling over the loose
shifting surface, we suddenly entered an avenue which, by the abrupt
contrast, seemed as dark and cool as a cloister. It was formed by two
rows of wild fig trees which, arching overhead, enclosed a species of
tunnel, the deep green roof of which was lighted by innumerable shafts
of golden sunlight, and from the interlacing branches there hung down
great stalactite-like masses of brown aërial roots. As we sauntered
up the avenue, gazing around with a seaman’s delight at its umbrageous
beauty, we passed numerous groups of native soldiers, barefooted
ragamuffins dressed in threadbare blue serge, squatting on the ground,
gravely engaged in a kind of primitive chess which they played with
large beans on squares scratched upon smooth patches of earth with a
pointed stick.
The end of the avenue brought us out opposite the front of the crazy,
weather-beaten fort, from one bastion of which the tall flagstaff bent
and shook in the wind, and at the wide gateway, where a barefooted
sentry stood on guard, I left the Captain to pursue his business while
I strolled with Vanderpuye into the town.
As I walked through the streets (if I can apply so dignified a name to
the irregular alleys by which the town was intersected) I stared about
at the strange and novel sights that presented themselves on all sides
with the wonder and curiosity of the raw country bumpkin that I was;
for it is to be remembered that I stepped, as it were, straight from
the quiet little English seaport into this strange and remote African
town with a transition as abrupt as if I had been transported thither
in an instant by some miracle-working jinn. So I walked on like one in
a dream by the side of my conductor--who, I may mention, was
tastefully attired in a suit of crimson-flowered chintz and wore a
white helmet and carpet slippers--under strange broad-leaved trees and
rattling cocoa nut palms, past mud-built native hovels and whitewashed
stores, pausing now and again to watch the groups of black people
under the shady trees and continually questioning the grinning
Vanderpuye.
We passed several Europeans--pale-faced, depressed-looking men with
square-cut beards, evidently Germans--all dressed in white drill, with
pipe-clayed helmets and red cummerbunds, who gazed at me with languid
curiosity; but of none of them did my guide take any notice until,
turning a corner into a broader thoroughfare, we suddenly encountered
a white man of quite different appearance, at whom I stared with
renewed astonishment.
He was a tall, elderly man with a fine white beard cut to a point, and
a face that was singularly grave and dignified in cast. But his dress,
which in another place might have seemed eminently appropriate, was
the occasion of my surprise, for it consisted of a suit of black
broad-cloth with a wide-skirted frock coat, a chimney-pot hat of
patriarchal mould, and polished black boots, and he carried a
neatly-rolled black silk umbrella. Altogether his appearance was even
more suggestive of the agency of some sportive jinn than my own, for
he might have been picked up just as he stood in Oxford Street and
dropped an instant later in the middle of Quittáh.
“This is Mr. Pereira,” said Vanderpuye, as the stranger removed his
hat with a flourish and bowed solemnly to me.
“You’re from the _Lady Jane_, I perceive,” said he glancing at the
house-badge on my white cap and speaking in almost perfect English.
I replied that I was, and explained that the Captain proposed to join
us as soon as he had finished his business with the Commissioner.
“Then,” said Mr. Pereira, “we will walk to my house and wait for him.”
So we resumed our walk through the hot, sandy street amidst crowds of
naked, black urchins and groups of small shaggy short-haired sheep,
which bleated stridently and quarrelled for scraps of offal--dry
plantain skins, shreds of sugar-cane, and even fragments of putrid
fish--which they disinterred from the grimy, heated sand.
In the course of about five minutes we arrived at Pereira’s house,
which abutted upon a narrow street or lane, along one side of which a
row of broad-leaved wild fig trees cast a deep and grateful shade.
The house was a two-storeyed building of whitewashed brick, the lower
or ground floor forming the trading store, over which were the living
rooms surrounded by a wooden verandah.
At the entrance to the stairway Vanderpuye took his leave, and Pereira
and I ascended to the “hall” or principal living-room, where my host
handed me, with a bow, into a luxurious easy-chair; and having blown a
shrill blast upon a whistle which he drew from his pocket, begged me
to excuse him for a few minutes while he despatched some business that
demanded his attention in the store.
Left to myself, I gazed about at my new surroundings with uncommon
satisfaction, for, accustomed as I had been to the narrow proportions
of the brig’s tiny cuddy, the lofty, spacious apartment in which I now
sat appeared quite magnificent, and as my eye took in the various
details--the floor covered with handsome matting, the wide, hospitable
chairs, the shining table with its bowl of flowers, the little painted
sideboard groaning under huge dishes of bananas, sour-sops and
mangoes, the perspiring water-cooler that hung in the open window,
and, above all, the charming vista of blue-green foliage,
glossy-leafed plantains and feathery cocoa-nut palms--I felt that the
prospect of a few months ashore was not so alarming after all.
My meditations were shortly interrupted by the entry of a barefooted
native servant who carried a pot of steaming coffee. The man grinned
amiably as he entered, and remarked “Mawnin’, sah!” having made which
concise but irrelevant remark--it being about five o’clock in the
afternoon--he laid out the coffee service on the table, fished a tin
of crackers out of the sideboard, and with another grin, flopped out
of the room. He had barely disappeared when the cheerful notes of
Captain Bithery’s voice were heard on the stairs, and in another
moment that gentleman entered with Pereira.
“So you’ve found your way here, have you?” he remarked, slapping me on
the shoulder. “Quite at home you look too in that chair. By Jingo! but
that coffee smells good! We don’t catch any sniffs like this out of
the _Lady Jane’s_ caboose, hey?”
“No, I expect you do not,” replied Pereira, as he filled our cups. “I
have tasted ship’s coffee, and it was--well, it was not like this.” He
smiled apologetically and handed the condensed milk to the skipper.
“I’ll wager it wasn’t,” agreed the Captain, smacking his lips and
sipping the hot fluid daintily from a spoon; “real good stuff this is.
Not native?”
“Grown at Akropong,” answered Pereira.
“Basel Mission?” inquired Bithery.
“No. A friend of mine has a plantation there, and I get the coffee
from him. I’ve a couple of hundred bags in the store down below now if
you’d like to have some.”
A knowing grin spread itself over the starboard side of Captain
Bithery’s face.
“There’s a cunning old fox for you,” he said, turning to me. “Before
I’ve been in his house five minutes he begins shoving his wares under
my nose and trying to trade. Oh! you’re a downy old bird, Pereira.”
The old man smiled deprecatingly and shrugged his shoulders, remarking
that good coffee was selling very well at home just now, and
eventually, after some haggling, the whole two hundred bags were
accepted as the first instalment of the _Lady Jane’s_ homeward cargo.
The conversation now drifted into strictly commercial channels, being
chiefly occupied with the disposal of the _Lady Jane’s_ cargo, and I
noticed that the Captain glanced at me from time to time as he talked,
and conjectured that he was wondering how I was impressed by what I
had seen of Africa. That this conjecture of mine was correct, was made
evident when Pereira presently left us, to pay a visit to the store,
for the Captain turned to me and asked a little anxiously:
“Well, Englefield, what do you think of Quittáh?”
“It doesn’t seem a bad sort of place at all,” I replied.
“I suppose,” the Captain continued after a pause, “you haven’t thought
any more of what I spoke about this morning?”
“Yes, I have,” I answered, “and I have decided that I don’t mind
staying ashore for a month or two and working the store.”
“Have ye now?” exclaimed Bithery, jumping up and seizing my hand. “I
am delighted to hear you say so, for if you will take charge of the
stuff ashore, I shall be relieved of a great responsibility. You see,
old man, there’s nobody else on board that I could trust with the
goods and the money, and of course I know nothing about any of these
shore chaps; so I take this as really kind of you. I’ll tell Pereira
that you’re going to stay with him, shall I?”
“By all means,” I replied, with another complacent glance round the
airy, comfortable room; “that is, if he is willing to put me up.”
“Oh, he’ll be willing enough,” rejoined the Captain, and Pereira
returning at this moment, the arrangement was completed out of hand,
much to the old gentleman’s apparent satisfaction.
That night I slept but little, for a variety of causes kept me
restless and wakeful. In the first place the large square bed, which
was enclosed in a mosquito curtain that flapped and rustled in the
wind, had an irritating way of keeping perfectly level and
stationary--a state of things that now seemed quite abnormal and
surprising. Then the night air was filled with new and unfamiliar
sounds. Instead of the rhythmical creaking of a wooden ship, the song
of the breeze among sails and rigging, the squeal of parrel or sheave,
and the grinding of the rudder, the stillness was broken into by the
“churr” of countless insects, the monotonous whistle of a large bat,
the muffled boom of the surf, and the shrill falsetto of a native dog.
And, lastly, my mind was in a whirl with the thoughts and speculations
concerning the new phase of life to which the morrow was to introduce
me and which I was indeed still turning over when the bugle from the
Hausa lines announced the coming of the day, and the dawn began to
filter in between the jalousies of my window.