I ENCOUNTER A CURIOUS RELIC.
A couple of days after our excursion to Anyáko I received a letter
by the land post from Captain Bithery. It was dated from Axím on the
Gold Coast, and in it, after giving me sundry items of news concerning
the brig and her crew, the Captain went on to say that he proposed to
drop down to the leeward coast in about a fortnight to ship some
produce that he hoped to obtain. This produce, consisting chiefly of
palm oil, kernels and copra, was to be collected for him by a certain
Cæsar Olympio--a Portuguese mulatto who lived at the village of Adena
or Elmina Chica, a beach village some twelve miles to leeward--_i.e._
to the east--of Quittáh; and he proposed that I should proceed to
Adena to conduct the purchase and superintend the storage of the
produce, leaving my store in Vanderpuye’s charge.
On receiving these instructions I made the necessary arrangements with
Pereira, and the same afternoon set out for Adena in a spare hammock
which he lent me and which was carried on the heads of four of our
labourers.
This was my first experience of this mode of travelling, and very
pleasant and even luxurious I found it to recline at full length in
the springy, swaying hammock as the barefooted carriers trudged over
the soft sand. A canopy of painted canvas protected me from the sun
during the daylight and from the dew when the night closed in, and by
peering underneath it I could look out at the groves of pattering
cocoa-nut palms on the one side, and on the other at the ocean which
surged up almost at our feet.
It was about eight o’clock and bright moonlight when the hammock drew
up outside the compound of Olympio’s house, and as I scrambled out on
to my feet I was saluted by a little yellow-faced man with bright,
beady, black eyes and a most persuasive and conciliatory smile.
“You are Mr. Olympio?” I said as I shook his hand.
“Quite right,” he replied in a singularly soft and musical voice,
adding, “I bid you welcome to Adena. Will you please to come in?”
I followed him into the house, a mud-built thatched cottage of three
rooms, and immediately became aware of an aromatic and savoury odour,
and perceived with great content that preparations--of a somewhat
primitive nature indeed--had been made for a meal.
I was not the only guest, it appeared, for, as I entered, a native in
European dress--what is locally known as a “scholar man”--rose to
greet me. He was the very antithesis of Olympio--big, burly, black as
the ace of spades, and full of the boisterous humour and high spirits
of the typical African; and as he gripped me by the hand and bid me
welcome to Adena his joy overflowed in little gurgles of laughter.
“Glad to see you, Mr. Englefield,” he said in a deep buzzing bass. “I
hear your name plenty time but never see you. Now I see you very fine
gentleman. Ha! ha! ha!” Here he leered at Olympio, who keckled softly
and rubbed his hands.
“Mr. Englefield smell de palaver sauce, hey! Olympio?” continued my
new friend, whose name, by the way, was David Annan. “You like dis
country chop, sah?”
I replied that I had very little acquaintance with African cookery.
“Aha! no! You no get fine country wife like Olympio to make you
palaver sauce. Dis yer Olympio he sabby what be good. He sabby fine
chop, fine liquor, fine girl. He very bad man, sah, ha! ha!”
He laughed uproariously, and certainly the picture of the little
wizened mulatto in the character of a _bon vivant_ and lady-killer was
not without its comic side. But these flights of wit were cut short by
the appearance of a handsome, light-coloured Fanti woman who carried a
deep, black clay dish, and was followed by a procession of small girls
and boys each bearing some adjunct to the feast, and soon the little
table, with its red and yellow-striped cloth, groaned under a burden
of delicacies. The black dish was filled with a gorgeous
orange-coloured palm oil stew, while smaller but similar receptacles
exhibited such dainties as kiki, or okro stew, rolls of fufu, looking
like gelatinous suet puddings, stuffed egg-fruit, large red capsicums
and piles of green and red chillis.
That dinner was a series of surprises, of which I experienced the
first when I unguardedly swallowed a spoonful of the orange-red
“palaver sauce” and was instantly reduced to tears and suffocation.
But the most surprising thing of all was the behaviour of Mr. David
Annan. He commenced the meal by popping into his mouth and calmly
masticating a large scarlet capsicum. He next pinched off a lump of
fufu and, indenting it with his thumb, fashioned it into a kind of cup
which he filled with the peppery stew and solemnly bolted with closed
eyes like a toad swallowing a caterpillar. Finally, he poured out half
a tumblerful of Angostura bitters and drained it at a draught. After
this my capacity for astonishment was exhausted, and if he had
proceeded to quench his thirst with the contents of the paraffin lamp
and to swallow the forks it would have seemed quite in character. But
he did neither of these things, and the meal dragged on to the end
with no further diversion from my sufferings.
Shortly after dinner Mr. Annan took his leave, earnestly beseeching me
to keep an eye on Olympio and endeavour to restrain him from the wild
excesses into which it was his habit to plunge, and the little mulatto
and I then settled down to pass the evening together.
The proceedings were not as boisterous as Annan’s warning might have
led one to expect, for Olympio was a shy and silent man, and,
moreover, unaccustomed to the society of Europeans; so we sat at
opposite ends of the table, with a calabash full of chopped
tobacco-leaf between us, and engaged in conversation which was so
spasmodic and one-sided that it gradually “dwindled away into
silence.” Then we sat speechless for some time, during which Olympio
observed me continuously, and whenever he caught my eye chuckled
softly and rubbed his hands, until I became possessed with an insane
desire to empty the tobacco-leaf over him and bonnet him with the
calabash.
But he saved me from this outrage by retiring to dive into a cupboard,
whence he returned carrying a biscuit tin and a weather-beaten
musical-box.
“You are perhaps fond of music, Mr. Englefield?”
“Very,” I replied, with an apprehensive glance at the musical-box.
“So am I,” said Olympio, and he proceeded to wind up the instrument;
and having balanced it upside down and cornerwise in the biscuit
tin--the only position in which it would consent to go--he “gave it
its head.”
It had but one tune, but of that it made the most, repeating it in
every variety of time; commencing with obscene hilarity, retarding to
funereal slowness and stopping in the most unexpected places.
I felt the old insane impulse reviving, and as I had no wish to see my
host fly from the room with his head through his own calabash, I
brought the entertainment to a close.
“I think, if you will excuse me, Mr. Olympio, I should like to turn
in. The hammock journey has rather tired me.”
“I shall be most delighted, sir,” replied Olympio, with less
politeness and more truth than he supposed. “I will show you your room
in a moment. Hi! Kwaku! why you no bring Mr. Englefield his candle?”
The latter question was bawled through the open door into the darkness
of the back compound, from which presently emerged a small boy bearing
a paraffin lamp, which he shaded skilfully from the strong sea breeze.
Olympio took the lamp and led the way into my bedroom, which opened
out of the room in which we had been sitting. He held the lamp above
his head as we entered, and looked round the room with evident pride
in the resources of civilisation that it exhibited. It was indeed far
beyond my expectations, and I hastened to say so, for Adena was but a
remote native hamlet and little could be expected there but the
ordinary accommodation of a native house. Yet there was a good iron
bedstead with clean white sheets and a serviceable mosquito curtain, a
washstand with a veritable china basin, and a dressing-table fitted
with a looking-glass fully nine inches square. But the most surprising
and unexpected object in the room was a small but massive oak chest of
drawers with a secretary top, which I at once perceived, both from its
quaint and antique design and the dark colour of the wood, must be of
considerable age.
“That is a fine piece of furniture, Mr. Olympio,” I remarked. “There
are not many like it in Africa, I expect.”
“No,” he replied, setting the lamp on it and passing his hand
affectionately over its polished surface. “I have never seen one like
it even in the castle at Elmina. It is very old. My grandfather had it
in his house at Adáffia when my father was a child, I have heard him
say.”
“Did he bring it out from Portugal with him?”
“Oh, no. It came from a ship that broke up on the beach at Adáffia
many, many years ago. I have heard that she was English.”
“You don’t know her name, then?”
“No. It was long, long time ago--before my grandfather’s time, I
think. I have told Kwaku to put your things in the drawers. I thought
you would like it because the chest is an English chest. I don’t give
it to the Germans who come here.”
He smiled shyly and backed towards the door, and when I had thanked
him--which I did warmly--for this graceful little act of courtesy, he
wished me “good-night” and went away much gratified.
Left to myself I made leisurely preparations for bed, ruminating, as I
undressed and washed, upon the strange fortunes of the old ship’s
chest, speculating upon its history, upon the men who had fashioned
it, on the old-time skipper who had sat before it to write his
old-world letters, and on the bills of lading, charter-parties, and
other sea documents that had once reposed in its pigeon-holes and
drawers.
When I had got into my pyjamas I lit a pipe--not of Olympio’s
tobacco--and taking down the lamp made a more thorough examination of
the chest. Its nautical character was now evident, for on each side,
near the bottom, was a perforated chock through which a lanyard had
been passed to secure it to a ring-bolt in the deck of the cabin. The
ornamentation, too, savoured of the sea, for the drawers were enriched
by rude shallow carvings of ropes in festoons, coils and hitches, and
each corner terminated above in a kind of diminutive figure-head
representing a buxom, blowsy sea-maiden with a very full bust and a
dolphin’s tail. The handles of the drawers were of hippo ivory, carved
with a knife and now cracked and yellow with age, and the flap that
let down to form the writing-table had once been decorated with a
painted design, but this was now obliterated.
I drew out the sliding supports and let down the flap, intending to
stow away my stationery in the upper part conveniently for writing.
Here I found a row of drawers, and one of pigeon-holes above them,
while the centre was occupied by a little tabernacle-like cupboard,
the door of which was decorated with a roughly executed painting, very
yellow and faded, of a sea-maiden, similar to those carved on the
corners. When I opened this door there was revealed a set of four very
small drawers, all of which were empty; and I noticed, when I pulled
out one, that it was only half the length of the drawers below the
pigeon-holes. Evidently this little nest of drawers masked some secret
repository--if that could be described as “secret” which was so
artlessly concealed. Now, there is something highly stimulating to
curiosity in the idea of a secret drawer or cupboard, no matter how
transparent the secrecy may be, and I had no sooner ascertained the
existence of this hiding-place than I was all agog to lay bare its
secret.
First I drew the drawers right out and felt at the back, thinking
there might be a cavity there; but the back of the drawer-case was
quite unyielding. Then I noticed that the nest which held the drawers
was a separate and independent structure let into the row of
pigeon-holes, and not continuous with them; so I took hold of one of
the partitions between the drawer spaces and gave a gentle pull, when,
sure enough, the whole nest came sliding forward, and I lifted it
bodily out of the cavity in which it fitted.
The back of the nest was formed by a panel, which I could see slid in
grooves, and I was about to slide it up when I suddenly bethought me
that I was perhaps invading the holy of holies of my too-confiding
host, who might quite conceivably make the secret drawers behind the
panel the repository of his most treasured possessions. However, I
considered that, even if it were so, I had no intention of abstracting
anything, while most likely the drawers were empty, so banishing my
scruples I boldly slid up the panel.
There were no drawers inside, but in place of them a flat copper box
which stood upright in the cavity and fitted it exactly. The green,
encrusted condition of this box seemed to indicate that it was not
often taken out, and when I drew it forth and tried to open it, the
close-fitting lid was jammed to so tightly that I had to prise it open
with my knife, when I found that it had an air-tight flange like the
lid of a snuff box. Inside the box, and exactly fitting it, was a
small folio volume bound in parchment. This I supposed to be Olympio’s
book of accounts, but I nevertheless shook it out of its case and
turned back the cover, when I perceived a pale and faded inscription
on the fly leaf in an odd, crabbed handwriting, but yet adorned with
several expert flourishes.
This was the inscription: “The Journall of Barnabas Hogg, Master of
the ship _Mermaid_, of Bristol City. 1641-16--” The second date was
not filled in, and I surmised that the journal and its writer had
together come to an untimely end in the roaring surf of Adáffia
beach. This was rendered more probable by the fact that the book had
remained in its hiding-place, for, had the Captain survived he would
presumably have taken his journal with him: a view which received
confirmation when I turned up the last entry, which was near the end
of the volume, and read:
“16 June (1643). We are still at anchor off Adáffia, but shall not
remain here since there seemeth to be little trade with this wild and
turbulent people who have brought us but a few elephant’s teeth (and
those very small and poor) and some teeth of river horses. Moreover
the sudden storms of this season of the year do make this roadstead
most perilous for ships to anchor in.”
That was the end of the journal. Doubtless on the day following, the
very danger that the Captain had foreseen overtook the ship, and as
for poor Master Barnabas himself and his hearts of oak, they all
probably perished in the surf or fell victims to the “wild and
turbulent” people of the coast villages.
There was something very solemn in this unexpected meeting with the
quaint and musty little volume. On that June evening, more than two
centuries ago, the final entry had been written and the book put away
by the methodical Master of the good ship _Mermaid_. And there it had
in all probability remained, unseen by human eye, its very existence
forgotten, while generation after generation was born and passed away,
while dynasties rose, flourished and decayed. As I turned over its
yellow leaves covered with faded writing I felt like one holding
converse with the dead (as indeed I was), and so fell into a train of
meditation from which I was at length aroused by the little American
clock in the sitting-room banging out with blatant modernity the hour
of midnight. So I rose, knocked out my pipe, replaced and closed up
the secret cupboard, and, having deposited the journal in my dispatch
box, turned into bed.