_Cinderella--A troubled Commissioner--Few people along the Coast--No
hotels--Nursing Sister to the rescue--Sekondi--A little log-rolling--A
harassed hedge--Carriers--Difficulties of the way--A funeral
palaver--No dinner and no ligjit--First night alone--Unruly carriers--No
breakfast--Crossing the Prah--A drink from a marmalade pot--“We no be
fit, Ma”--The evolution of Grant--Along the Coast in the dark--Elmina at
last--A sympathetic medical officer--“I have kicked your policeman.”_
West Africa is Cinderella among the colonies. No one goes there for
pleasure, and of those who gain their livelihood from the country
three-fourths regard themselves as martyrs and heroes, counting the days
till the steamer shall take them home again for that long leave that
makes a position there so desirable. The other quarter perhaps, some I
know for certain, find much good in the country, many possibilities, but
as yet their voice is not heard by the general public above that chorus
that drowns its protest. That any man should come to the Gold Coast for
pleasure would be surprising; that a woman should come when she had no
husband there, and that she should want to go overland all along the
sea-board, passed belief. “Why? why?” asked everyone. “A tourist on
the Coast,” a surprised ship's captain called me, and I disclaimed it
promptly. My publisher had commissioned a book and I was there to
write it. And then they could not make up their minds whether I or my
publisher were the greater fool, for but very few among that little
company saw anything to write about in the country.
In Axim the troubled Commissioner set his foot down. I had been to Half
Assinie and he felt that ought to satisfy the most exacting woman; but
since I was anxious to do more he stretched a point and took me as far
as Prince's, an abandoned Branden-burgher fort that is tumbling into
ruins, with a native farm in the courtyard, but no farther could I go.
Carriers he could not get me, and for the first time I saw a smile on
his face, a real relieved smile, when he saw me into the boat that took
me to the steamer bound for Sekondi.
No one goes along the Coast except an occasional Public Works Department
man or a School Inspector; nobody wants to, and it is not easy of
accomplishment.
Even in the towns it is difficult for the stranger. I do not know
what would happen if that stranger had not friends and letters of
introduction, for though there are one or two hotels, as yet no one
who is not absolutely driven to it by stern necessity stays in a
West-African hotel. In Sekondi it is almost impossible, for at this town
is the Coast terminus of the railway that runs to the mines at Tarkwa
and Kumasi, and the miner both coming and returning seems to require
so much liquid refreshment that he is anything but a desirable
fellow-housemate, wherefore was I deeply grateful when Miss Oram,
the nursing Sister at the Sekondi Hospital, asked me to stay in her
quarters.
Sekondi straggles up and down many hills, and by and by if some definite
plan of beautifying be followed may be made rather a pretty place.
Even now at night, from some of the bungalows on the hillsides when the
darkness gently veils the ugly scars that man's handiwork leaves behind,
with its great sweep of beach, its sloping hillsides dotted with lights,
the stars above and the lights in the craft on the water that lie just
outside the surf, it has a wonderful charm and beauty that there is no
denying. And yet there is no doubt Sekondi should not be there. Who
is responsible for it I do not know, but there must have been some
atrocious piece of log-rolling before Elmina and Cape Coast were
deprived of the benefit of the railway to the north. At Sekondi is no
harbour. It is but an open roadstead where in days gone past both the
Dutch and English held small forts for the benefit of their trade.
At Sekondi was no town. At the end of the last century the two little
fishing villages marked the Dutch and English forts. Now the English
fort is gone, Fort Orange is used as a prison, and a town has sprung
into existence that has taken the trade from Cape Coast and Elmina. It
is a town that looks like all the English towns, as if no one cared
for it and as if everyone lives there because perforce he must. In the
European town the roads are made, and down their sides are huge gutters
to carry off the storm waters; the Englishman, let it be counted to
him for grace, is great on making great cemented gutters that look like
young rivers when it rains, and one enterprising Commissioner planted an
avenue or two of trees which promise well, only here and there someone
has seen fit to cut a tree or two down, and the gap has never been
replaced. Some of the bungalows are fairly comfortable, but though
purple bougainvillia, flame-coloured flamboyant trees, and dainty
pink corrallitis will grow like weeds, decent gardens are few and far
between. Instead of giving an impression of tropical verdure as it
easily might, Sekondi looks somewhat hot and barren. This, it is
only fair to say, I did not notice so much till I had visited German
territory and seen what really could be done with the most unpromising
material in a tropical climate. But German territory is the beloved
child, planned and cared for and thought much of; English territory is
the foster-child, received into the household because of the profit it
will bring, and most of the towns of the Gold Coast shore bear these
marks plain for everyone to read. They suffer, and suffer severely from
the iniquitous system that is for ever changing those in authority over
them in almost every department.
Sekondi Hospital for instance is rather a nice-looking building but it
is horribly bare-looking and lacks sadly a garden and greenery. There
is, of course, a large reserve all round it where are the houses of the
medical officers and nursing Sisters, and in this reserve many things
are growing, but the general impression is of something just beginning.
This I hardly understood, since the place has been in existence for the
last ten years, till I found out that in the last eight months there
had been four different doctors head of that hospital, and each of those
doctors had had different views as to how the grounds should be laid
out. So round the medical officer's bungalow the hedge had been three
times planted and three times dug up. Just as I left, the fourth
unfortunate hedge was being put in. That, as I write, is nearly six
weeks ago, so in all probability they are now considering some new plan.
If only someone with knowledge would take in hand the beautifying of
these West-African towns and insist on the plans being adhered to! In
one of the principal streets of Sekondi is a tamarind tree standing
alone, a pleasant green spot in the general glare and heat, a reminder
of how well the old Dutch did, a reproach that we who are a great people
do not do better. It seems to me it would want so little to make these
towns beautiful places, the moral effect would be so great if they were.
But I had come to go along the Coast, and the question was carriers;
I appealed to the transport. My friend, Mr Migeod, the head of the
transport, was on leave, and his second in command shook his head
doubtfully. The troops in the north were out on manoeuvres and they had
taken almost very carrier he could lay his hands on; but he would see
what he could do. How few could I do with? Seventeen, I decided, with
two servants, was the very fewest I could move with, and he said he
would do his best. I wanted to start on the following Monday, and I
chose the hour of ten; also because this was my first essay entirely
alone I decided I would not go farther than Chama, nine miles along the
Coast to the east.
So, on a Monday morning early in March, behold me with all my goods and
chattels, neatly done up into loads not weighing over 60 lbs., laid out
in a row in the Sister's compound, and waiting for the carriers. I had
begged a policeman for dignity, or protection, I hardly know which, and
he came first and ensconced himself under the house, and I sat on the
verandah and waited. Presently the carriers came and began gingerly
turning over the loads and looking at me doubtfully. They were Mendis
and Timinis, not the regular Government carriers, but a scratch lot
picked up to fill up gaps in the ranks. I didn't like the looks of them
much, but there was nothing else to be done so I prepared to accept
them. But it always takes two to make a bargain, and apparently those
carriers liked me less than I liked them, for presently they one and all
departed, and I began a somewhat heated discussion across the telephone
with the head of the transport. Looking back, I don't see what he could
have done more than he did. It is impossible to evolve carriers out
of nothing, but then I didn't see it quite in that light. I wanted
carriers; I was looking to him to produce them, and I hadn't got them.
He gave me to understand he thought I was unreasonable, and we weren't
quite as nice to each other as we might have been. The men, he said,
were frightened, and I thought that was unreasonable, for there was
nothing really terrifying about me.
At three o'clock another gang arrived with a note from the transport
officer. They were subsisted for sixteen days, and I might start there
and then for Accra.
I should have preferred to have subsisted my men myself; that is, given
them each threepence daily, as I had on the way to the French border,
seeing that they were not regular Government men; but as the thing was
done there was nothing for it but to make the best of it, and I went
down, hunted up my policeman, and saw the loads on to the men's heads.
I saw them start out in a long string, and then the thing that always
happens in Africa happened. Both my servants were missing.
Zacco, a boy with a scarred face from the north, did not much matter,
but Grant knew my ways and I could trust him. Clearly, out in the wilds
by myself with strange carriers and without even a servant, I should be
very badly off, and I hesitated. Not for long though. If I were going to
let little things connected with personal comfort stand in my way I knew
I should never get to Accra, so I decided to start; my servants might
catch me up, and if they did not, I would rely on the ministrations of
the hammock-boys. If the worst came to the worst, I supposed I could
put my dignity in my pocket and cook myself something, or live on tinned
meat and biscuits; and so, leaving directions with my hostess that those
boys were to be severely reprimanded when they turned up, I got into my
hammock and started.
The road to Accra from Sekondi is along the seashore, and so, to be
very Irish, there is no road. Of a truth, very few people there are who
choose to go by land, as it is so much easier to go by steamer, and the
way, generally speaking, is along the sand. Just outside Sekondi the
beach is broken by huge rocks that run out into the sea, apparently
barring the way effectually, and those rocks had to be negotiated. My
hammock-boys stopped, and I got out and watched my men with the loads
scrambling over the rocks, and one thing I was sure of, on my own feet
I could not go that way. I mentioned that to my demurring men, and
insisted that over those rocks they had to get me somehow, if it took
the eight hammock-boys to do it. And over those rocks I was got without
setting foot out of my hammock, and I fairly purred with pride, most
unjustly setting it down to my own prowess and feeling it marked a
distinct stage on my journey eastwards. We were, all of us, pleased
as we went on again in all the glare of a tropical afternoon, and I
mentally sniffed at the men who had hinted I was not able to manage
carriers. There was not a more uplifted woman in all Africa than I
was for about the space of half an hour. It is trite to say pride goes
before a fall. We have all heard it from our cradles and I ought to have
remembered it, but I didn't. Presently we came to a village, or rather
two villages, with a stream dividing them, and there was a tremendous
tom-toming going on, and the monotonous sound of natives chanting.
The place was surrounded by thick greenery, only there was a broad way
between the houses, a brown road with great waterways and holes in it,
and the occasional shade-tree, under which the village rests in the heat
of the day, and holds its little markets and its little councils and
even does a stray job of cooking. The tom-toming went on, and men
appeared blowing horns. They were evidently very excited, and I remember
still, with a shudder, the staring, bloodshot eyes of two who passed my
hammock braying on horns. Most of my men could speak a little English,
so I asked not without some little anxiety, “What is the matter?”
“It be funeral palaver, Ma.”
Oh, well, a funeral palaver was no great matter, surely. I had never
heard of these Coast natives doing anything more than drink palm wine
to celebrate the occasion. Some of those we passed had evidently drunk
copiously already, and I was thankful we were passing. We came to the
little river, we crossed the ford, and then we stopped.
“We go drink water, Ma,” said my men.
I ought to have said “No,” but it was a very hot afternoon, and the
request was not unreasonable. They had had to work hard carrying me
over those rocks so I got out and let them go. And then, as I might have
known, I waited. I grew cross, but it is no good losing your temper when
there is no one to be made uneasy by it, and then I grew frightened;
but, if it is foolish to lose one's temper, it is the height of folly to
be afraid when there is no help possible. I was standing on the bank of
the little river that we had just forded, my hammock was at my feet,
all around was greenery, tropical greenery of palm and creeper, not very
dense compared to other bush I have seen, but dense enough to prevent
one's stepping off the road; before me was the village, with its mud
walls and its thatched roofs, and behind me were the groves of trees on
the other side of the water that hid the village, from which came the
sound of savage revelry. Never have I felt more alone, and yet Sekondi
was a bare five miles away. I comforted myself with the reflection that
nothing would be likely to happen, but the thought of those half-naked
men with the bloodshot, staring eyes was most unpleasantly prominent
in my mind. Some little naked boys came and bathed and stared at me;
I didn't know whether to welcome them as companions or not. They
understood no English, and when asked where were my men only stared the
harder. I tried to take a photograph, but the policeman, who carried my
stand, was also absent at the funeral, and I fear my hand shook, for
I have never seen that picture. Then, at last, when I was absolutely
despairing, a hammock-boy turned up. He was a most ragged ruffian, with
a printed cloth by way of trousers, a very openwork singlet, all torn
away at one arm, a billycock hat in the last stages of dilapidation, and
a large red woollen comforter with a border of black, blue, and yellow.
That comforter fascinated me, and I looked at it as I talked to him, and
wondered where it had been made. It had been knitted, and many of the
stitches had been dropped, and I pictured to myself the sewing-party
sitting round the fire doing useful work, while someone read aloud one
of Father Benson's books. My hammock-boy looked at me as if he wondered
how I was taking it, and wiped his mouth with the tail of the comforter,
where they had used up the odd bits of wool. He flung it across his
shoulder and a long, dropped red stitch caught over his ear.
“Where be the men?” I was very angry indeed, which was very rough on
the only one of the crowd who had turned up. He was very humble, and I
suggested he should go and look for them, and tell them that if “they
no come quick, they get no pay.” He departed on his errand, and I waited
with a sinking heart. Even if there was no danger, and I was by no means
sure of that, with that tom-toming and that chant in my ears, I could
not afford to go back and announce that I had failed. All my outlay had
been for nothing. Another long wait, and more little boys to look at me.
The evening was coming; here in the hollow, down among the trees, the
gloom was already gathering, and I began to think that neither Chama
nor Sekondi would see me that night. I wondered what it would be like to
spend the night under the trees, and whether there were any beasts that
might molest me.
“Toom, toom, toom,” went the village drum, as if to remind me there
might be worse things than spending the night under the trees, and
then my friend with the comforter appeared, leading two of the other
hammock-boys; one wore a crocheted, red tam-o'-shanter that fell over
his face--probably made at the same sewing-party. It was the same wool.
I talked to those three men. Considering they were the best behaved
of the lot, it comes back to me now that I was rather hard on them. I
pointed out the dire pains and penalties that befell hammock-boys who
did not pay proper attention to their duties, and I trusted that the
fact that I was utterly incapable of inflicting those penalties was not
as patent to them as it was to me, and then I decreed that my friend
with the comforter should go back and try and retrieve a fourth man
while the other two stayed with me. After another long wait he got that
fourth man and we started off, I dignifiedly wrathful--at least I hope
I was dignified; there was no doubt about the wrath--and they bearing
evident marks of having consumed a certain quantity of the funeral palm
wine.
It was dark when we reached Chama, at least as dark as it ever is on a
bright, starlight night in the Tropics, and we came out of the gloom
of the trees to find a dark bungalow raised high on stilts on a cement
platform, looming up against the star-spangled sky, and then another
surprise, a comforting surprise, awaited me: on that cement platform
were two white spots, and those white spots rose up to greet me,
shamefaced, humble, contrite, my servants. They had evidently slunk past
me without being seen, and I was immensely relieved. But naturally I
did not say so. I mentioned that I was very angry with them, and that it
would take a long course of faithful service to make up for so serious
a lapse, and they received my reproof very humbly, and apparently never
realised that I was just about as lonely a woman as there was in
the world at that moment, and would gladly have bartered all my wild
aspirations after fame and fortune for the comfortable certainty that I
was going to spend a safe night. It certainly does not jump with my firm
faith in thought transference that none of those men apparently ever
discovered I was afraid. I should have thought it was written all over
me, but also, afraid as I was, it never occurred to me to turn back; so,
if the one thought impressed them, perhaps the other did too.
Then I waited on that dark verandah. There was some scanty Government
furniture in the rest-house, and my repentant servant fetched me out a
chair, and I sat and waited. I looked out; there was the clearing round
the house, the gloom of the dense greenery that grew up between the
house and the seashore, while east ran the road to the town of Chama,
about a ten minutes' walk distant, and on the west a narrow track hardly
discernible in the gloom came out of the greenery. Up that I had come
and up that I expected my men. And it seemed I might expect them. No one
was going to deny me that privilege. Still, I began to feel distinctly
better. At least I had arrived at Chama, and four hammock-boys and two
servants were very humbly at my service. I wasn't going to spend the
night in the open at the mercy of the trees and the unknown beasts, and
I laughed at the idea of being afraid of the trees, though to my mind
African trees have a distinct personality of their own. Well, there
was nothing to be done but wait, and I waited in the dark, for as no
carriers had come in there was no possibility of a light, or of dinner
either for that matter. Grant was extremely sympathetic and most
properly shocked at the behaviour of the carriers. No punishment could
be too great for men who could treat his missus in such an outrageous
manner. In the excitement and bustle of getting off I had eaten very
little that day, so I was very hungry now; it added to my woes and
decreased my fear. Nothing surely could be going to happen to a woman
who was so very commonplacely hungry. At last, about ten o'clock, I saw
my loads come straggling out of the gloom of the trees on to the little
path up to the platform, and then, before I quite realised what was
happening, the verandah was full of carriers, drunk and hilarious, and
not at all inclined to recognise the enormity of their crime. Something
had to be done, I knew. It would be the very worst of policies to allow
my verandah to be turned into pandemonium. The headman had lighted a
lantern, that I made Grant take, and by its flickering light I singled
out my policeman, cheerfully happy, but still, thank goodness, holding
on to the sticks of my camera. Him I tackled angrily. How dared he
allow drunken carriers on my verandah, or anywhere near me? Everyone, on
putting down his load, was to go downstairs immediately. How we cleared
that verandah I'm sure I don't know. The four virtuous haminock-boys
and Grant and Zacco, I suppose, all took a hand, backed by their stern
missus, and presently I and my servants had it to ourselves with a
humble and repentant policeman sitting on the top of the steps, and
Grant set about getting my dinner. It was too late, I decided, to cook
anything beyond a little coffee, so I had tinned tongues and tinned
apricots this my first night alone in Africa. Then came the question
of going to bed. There were several rooms in the rest-house, but the
verandah seemed to me a pleasanter place where to sleep on a hot night.
Of course, I was alone, and would it be safer inside? The doors and
windows were frail enough, besides it would be impossible to sleep
with them shut, so I, to my boy's intense astonishment, decided for the
verandah, and there I set up my bed, just an ordinary camp-bed, with
mosquito curtains over it, and I went to bed and wondered if I could
sleep.
First I found myself listening, listening intently, and I heard a
thousand noises, the night birds calling, the skirl of the untiring
insects, a faint tom-toming and sounds of revelry from the village,
which gave things an unpleasant air of savagery, the crash of the
ceaseless surf on the beach. I decided I was too frightened to sleep and
I heartily wished myself back in England, writing mystery stories for a
livelihood, and then I began to think that I was most desperately
tired, that the mosquito curtains were a great protection, and before
I realised I was sleepy was sound asleep and remembered no more till I
awakened wondering where I was, and saw the first streaks of light in
the east. Before the first faint streaks of light and sunrise is but a
short time in the Tropics, and now I knew that everything depended upon
me, so I flew out of bed and dressed with great promptitude, and there
was Grant with early-morning tea and then breakfast. But no carriers;
and I had given orders we were to start at half-past five. It was long
past that; six o'clock, no carriers, half-past. I sent Zacco for the
headman and he like the raven from the ark was no more seen. I sent
Grant and he returned, not with an olive branch but with the policeman.
“Where are the carriers?” I demanded.
“They chop,” said he nonchalantly, as if it were no affair of his.
“Chop! At this hour in the morning?” It was close on seven.
He signified that they did.
“Bring the headman.” And I was a very angry white missus indeed. Since
I had got through the night all right I felt I was bound to do somthing
today and I was not nearly so afraid as I had been.
The headman wept palm-wine tears. “They chop,” he said and he sobbed and
gulped and wiped his face with the back of his hand like a discomfited
Somersetshire laburer. His condition immensely improved my courage. I
was the white woman all over dealing with the inferior race, and I had
not a doubt as to what should be done.
“Policeman, you follow me.”
He did not like it much, my little Fanti policeman, because he feared
these Mendis and Timinis who could have eaten him alive, but he followed
me however reluctantly. I wanted him as representing law and order. The
thinking I intended to do myself.
We walked down to the village and there in the middle of the road were
my carriers in two parties, each seated round a large enamelled-iron
basin full of fish and rice. They did chop. They looked up at me with a
grin, but I had quite made up my mind.
“Policeman,” I said, “no man chops so late. Throw away the chop.”
He hesitated. He could not make up his mind which he was most afraid of,
me or the men. Finally he decided that I was the most terrifying person
and he gingerly picked up one of those basins and carefully put it down
under a shrub.
“Policeman,” I said, and I was emphatic, “that's not the way to throw
away chop. Scatter it round,” and with one glance at me to see if I
meant what I said, he scattered it on the ground. What surprised me was
that the men let him. Certainly those round the second dish seized it
and fled up towards the rest-house, and we came after them. When we
arrived the men were still eating, but there was still some rice in
the dish, and I made the policeman seize it and fling it away, and then
every one of those men came back meekly to work, picked up their loads
or waited round the hammock for me.
I saw the loads off with the headman, and told him to get across the
Prah River if he could and on to Kommenda, where I proposed to have my
luncheon, and then I stayed behind to take some photographs of the old
fort. It took me some time to take my pictures. The heat was intense,
and beyond the fort, which is quaintly old-world, there is not much to
see. The town is the usual Coast village built of clay, which they call
swish, with thatched roofs; the streets between the houses are hot and
dry and bare, and little naked children disport themselves there with
the goats, sheep, pigs, and chickens. There are the holes from which
the earth has been taken to make the swish--man-traps in the night,
mosquitobreeding places at all times--and there are men and women
standing gossiping in the street, wondering at the unusual sight of a
white woman, just for all the world as they might do in a remote Cornish
village if a particularly smart motor passed by. They are fishing
villages, these villages along the Coast, living by the fishing,
and growing just a little maize and plantains and yams for their own
immediate needs; and it is a curious thing to say, but they give one the
same sleepy, out-of-the-world feeling that a small village in Cornwall
does. There is not in them the go and the promise there is in an Ashanti
village, the dormant wealth waiting to be awakened one feels there is
along the Volta. No, these places were exploited hundreds of years ago
by the men who built the fort that frowns over them still, and they are
content to live on from day to day with just enough to keep them going,
with the certain knowledge that no man can die of starvation, and when a
young man wants distraction I suppose he goes to the bigger towns. So
I found nothing of particular interest in Chama, and I went on till I
reached the Prah River, just where it breaks out across the sands and
rushes to meet the ocean.
I wondered in that journey to Accra many times whether my face was set
hard, whether my lips were not one firm, stern line that could never
unbend and look kindly again. My small camp mirror that I consulted was
exceedingly unflattering, but if I had not before been certain that no
half-measures were of any use I should have been certain of it when
I reached the river. There lay my loads, and sitting down solemnly
watching them like so many crows, rather dissipated crows, were my men.
They rose up as my hammock came into view.
“Missus, men want drink water. It be hot.”
It was hot, very hot, and the river it seemed was salt; moreover, the
only house in sight, and that was a good way off, was the hut apparently
belonging to the ferryman. I looked at them, and my spirits rose; it was
borne in on me that I had them well in hand, for there was no reason why
they should not have gone off in a body to get that much-needed water.
But I gave the order, “One man go fetch water.”
Why they obeyed me I don't know now, and why they didn't take the
bucket I don't know now. I ought to have sent one man with a bucket;
but experience always has to be bought, and I only realised that I was
master of the situation, and must not spoil it by undue haste. So I
solemnly stood there under my sun umbrella and watched those men have a
drink one by one out of an empty marmalade pot. Whenever, in the future,
I see one of those golden tins, it will call up to my memory a blazing
hot day, a waste of sand and coarse grass, a wide river flowing through
it, and a row of loads with a ragged company of black men sitting
solemnly beside them waiting while one of their number brought them
a drink. That drink was a tremendous piece of business, but we were
through with it at last, and though I was rather weary and very hot I
was inclined to be triumphant. I felt I had the men fairly well in hand.
Still, they weren't all that I could have desired. The road was very,
very bad indeed, sometimes it was down on the heavy sand, sometimes the
rocks were too rough--the hammock had to be engineered up and down the
bank by devious and uncomfortable ways, sometimes we stopped to buy
fruit in a village, and sometimes the men stopped and declared: “Missus,
oder hammock-boy, he no come.”
Then I was hard. I knew it was no good being anything else.
“If hammock-boy no come you go on. I no stop.”
And they went, very slowly and reluctantly, but they went. It seemed
cruel, but I soon grasped the fact that if I once allowed them to wait
for the relief men who lingered there always would be lingerers, and we
should crawl to Accra at the rate of five miles a day.
They sang songs as they went, and this my first day out the song took a
most personal turn.
“If man no get chop,” they intoned in monotonous recitative, “he go die.
Missus frow away our chop-----”
The deduction was obvious and I answered it at once. “All right, you go
die. I no care. If men no come to work they may die.”
But they went very badly indeed, and it was after two o'clock in the
afternoon before we arrived at Kommenda on the seashore, where there is
a village and a couple of old forts falling into decay. Here, inside the
courtyard of one of them, which is Ju-ju, I had my table and chair put
out and my luncheon served. The feeling of triumph was still upon me.
Already I was nearer Elmina than Sekondi and I felt in all probability,
bad as they were, the men would go on. But, before I had finished my
luncheon, my serenity received another shock. Of course no one dared
disturb so terrible a person at her chop, but, after I had finished,
while I was endeavouring to instruct Zacco in the way in which a kettle
might be induced to boil without letting all the smoke go down the
spout--I wanted some coffee--Grant came up with a perturbed countenance
and said the headman wanted to speak to me. I sent for him.
“Missus,” he began propitiatingly, “man be tired too much. You stop here
to-night; we take you Cape Coast to-morrow.”
[Illustration: 0200]
For the moment I was very properly wrathful. Then I reflected--the white
men did not understand, the majority of them, my desire to see Elmina,
the most important castle on the Coast, how then should these black men
understand. There was a tiny rest-house built on the bastion of the fort
here, and looking at it I decided it was just the last place I should
like to spend the night in. I did not expect to meet a white man at
Elmina, but at least it must be far nearer civilisation than this.
I looked at my headman more in sorrow than in anger. He was a
much-troubled person, and evidently looked upon me as a specimen of the
genus “Massa.” I said:
“That is a very beautiful idea, headman, and does you credit. The
only drawback I see to it is that I do not want to go to Cape Coast
to-morrow, and I do want to go to Elmina to-night.”
He scratched his head in a bewildered fashion, transferring a very
elderly tourist cap from one hand to the other in order that he might
give both sides a proper chance.
“Man no be fit,” he got out at last.
“Oh, they no be fit. Send for the Chief,” and I turned away and went on
with Zacco's instructions in the art of making coffee. Still, in my
own mind, I was very troubled. That rest-house on the bastion was
a horrid-looking hole, and I had heard it whispered that the men of
Kommenda were very truculent. If I had been far from a white man at
Chama, I was certainly farther still now at Kommenda. Still, my common
sense told me I must not allow I was dismayed.
Presently I was told the Chief had arrived, and I went outside and
interviewed him. He wasn't a very big chief, and his stick of office
only had a silver top to it with the name of the village written on it
in large letters. He could speak no English, but with my headman and
his linguist he soon grasped the fact that I wanted more carriers, and
agreed to supply them. Then I went back inside the fort and he joined
the group outside who had come to look at the white woman, and who, I
am glad to say, all kept respectfully outside. I seated myself again and
sent for the headman.
“Headman, you bring in man who no be fit.”
The headman went outside and presently returned with the downcast,
ragged scarecrow who had been carrying my bed.
“You no be fit?”
“No, Ma.”
I pointed out a place against the wall.
“You go sit there. You go back to Sekondi. I get 'nother man. Headman,
fetch in other man who no be fit.”
The culprit sat himself down most reluctantly, afraid, whether of me or
the Ju-ju that was supposed to reign over the place, I know not, and the
headman brought in another man.
“You no be fit?”
“No, Ma”; but it was a very reluctant no.
“Sit down over there. Another man, headman,” but somehow I did not think
there would be many more. And for once my intuitions were right. The
headman came back reporting the rest were fit. I felt triumphant.
Then the unfortunate scare-crows against the wall rose up humbly and
protested eagerly: “we be fit.”
But I was brutally stern. It cost me dear in the end, but it might have
cost me dearer if I had taken them on. However, I had no intention of
doing any such thing. They had declared themselves of their own free
will “no fit.” I was determined they should remain “no fit” whatever
it cost me to fill their places. I must rule this caravan, and I must
decide where we should halt. I engaged two Kommenda men to carry the
loads, and when I had taken photographs of the fort--how thankful I was
that they turned out well, for Kommenda is one of the most unget-at-able
places I know, and before a decent photographer gets there again I don't
suppose there will be one stone left on another--I started after my men
to Elmina.
The carriers who were “no fit” came with us. Why, I hardly know, but
they were very, very repentant.
It was four o'clock before we left Kommenda, and since we had twelve
miles to go I hardly expected to arrive before dark, but I did think we
might arrive about seven. I reckoned without my host, or rather without
my carriers. There was more than a modicum of truth in the statement
that they were no fit. The dissipation of the day before, and the
lack of chop to-day--carriers always make a big meal early in the
morning--were beginning to tell; besides they were very bad specimens
of their class, and they lingered and halted and crawled till I began
to think we should be very lucky indeed if we got into Elmina before
midnight. The darkness fell, and in the little villages the lights
began to appear--these Coast villagers use a cheap, a very cheap sort
of kerosene lamp--and more than once my headman appealed to me. “We stop
here, Ma.”
I was very tired myself, now, very tired, indeed, and gladly would I
have stopped, but those negro houses seen by the light of a flickering,
evil-smelling lamp were impossible; besides I realised it would be
very bad to give in to my men. Finally we left the last little village
behind, and before us lay a long, crescent-shaped bay, with a twinkling
point of light at the farther horn--Elmina, I guessed. It was quite dark
now, sea and sky mingled, a line of white marked the breakers where
the water met the sands, and on my left was the low shore hardly
rising twenty feet above the sea-level, and covered with short, wiry
sea-grasses, small shrubs, and the creeping bean. The men who were
carrying me staggered along, stumbling over every inequality of the
ground, and I remembered my youthful reading in “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” and
felt I very much resembled Legree. There was, too, a modicum of sympathy
growing up in my mind for Legree and all slave-drivers. Perhaps there
was something to be said for them; they certainly must have had a
good deal to put up with. Presently my men dropped the hammock, and I
scrambled out and looked at them angrily. The carriers were behind, the
policeman--my protection and my dignity--was nowhere to be seen, my two
servants were just behind, where they ought to have been, and my four
hammock-boys looked at me in sullen misery.
“We no be fit.”
The case was beyond all words at my command, and I set my face to the
east, and began to walk in the direction of the feeble little light I
could see twinkling in the far distance, and which I concluded rightly,
as it turned out, must be Elmina.
My servants overtook me, and Grant, who had been a most humble person
when first I engaged him, who had been crushed with a sense of his own
unworthiness the night before, now felt it incumbent upon himself to
protest.
“You no walk, Ma. It no be fit.”
How sick I was of that “no be fit.”
“Grant,” I said with dignity, at least I hope it was with dignity,
abandoning pigeon English, “there is no other way. Tell those boys if I
walk to Elmina they get no pay,” and I stalked on, wishing at the bottom
of my heart I knew something of the manners and customs of the African
snake. In my own country I should have objected strongly to walking in
such grass, when I could not see my way, and it just shows the natural
selfishness of humanity that this thought had never occurred to me while
my hammock-boys were carrying me. I don't suppose I had gone half a mile
when Grant and the boys overtook me.
“Ma,” said Grant with importance, the way he achieved importance that
day was amazing, “you get in. They carry you now.”
“They no be fit.”
“They carry you,” declared he emphatically.
“We try, Ma,” came a humble murmur from the boys, and I got in once more
and we staggered along.
How I hated it all, and what a brute I felt. I thought to offer a little
encouragement, so I said after a little time, when I thought the light
was getting appreciably larger: “Grant, which of these men carry me
best?” and thought I would offer a suitable reward.
“They all carry you very badly, Ma,” came back Grant's stern reply;
“that one,” and he pointed to the unfortunate who bore the lefthand
front end of the hammock, “carry you worst.”
Now, here was a dilemma. The light wasn't very far away now, and I could
see against the sky the loom of a great building.
“Very well,” I said, “each of the other three shall have threepence
extra,” and the lefthand front man dropped his end of the hammock with
something very like a sob, and left the other three to struggle on as
best they might. We were close to Elmina now. There was a row of palms
on our right between us and the surf, and I could see houses with tiny
lights in them, and so could the men.
“I will walk,” I said.
But the three remaining were very eager. “No, Ma; no, Ma, we carry you.”
Then there appeared a man in European clothes, and him I stopped and
interviewed.
“Is that the Castle of Elmina?”
“Yes,” said he, evidently mightily surprised at being interviewed by a
white woman.
“Who is in charge?” and I expected to hear some negro post office or
Custom official.
“Dr Dove,” said the stranger in the slurring tones of the negro.
“A white man?”
“Yes, a white man.”
For all my weariness, I could have shouted for joy. Such an unexpected
piece of good luck! I had not expected to meet a white man this side
of Cape Coast. I had thought the great Castle here was abandoned to the
tender mercies of the negro official.
“You can get in,” went on my new friend; “the drawbridge is not down
yet.”
A drawbridge! How mediaeval it sounded, quite in keeping with the day I
had spent, the day that had begun in Chama fifty years ago.
We staggered along the causeway, the causeway made so many hundreds
of years ago by the old Portuguese adventurers; the sentry rose up in
astonishment, and we staggered across it into the old courtyard; I got
out of my hammock at the foot of a flight of broad stone steps, built
when men built generously, and a policeman, not mine, raced up
before me. All was in darkness in the great hall, and then I heard an
unmistakable white man's voice in tones of surprise and unbelief.
“A missus, a------”
I stepped forward in the pitchy darkness, wondering what pitfalls there
might be by the way.
“I am a white woman,” I said uncertainly, for I was very weary, and I
had an uneasy feeling that this white man, like so many others I had
met, might think I had no business to be there, and I didn't feel quite
equal to asserting my rights just at that moment, and then I met an
outstretched hand. It needed no more. I knew at once. It was a kindly,
friendly, helpful hand. Young or old, pretty or plain, ragged, smart,
or disreputable, whatever I was, I felt the owner of that hand would
be good to me. Dr Duff, for the negro had pronounced his name after his
kind, led me upstairs through the darkness, with many apologies for the
want of light, into a big room, dimly lighted by a kerosene lamp, and
then we looked at each other.
“God bless my soul! Where on earth did you come from?” said he.
“No one told me there was a white man in Elmina,” said I; “and the
relief of finding one was immense.”
But not till I was washed and bathed, dressed, fed, and in my right
mind did we compare notes, and then we sat up till midnight discussing
things.
It seemed to me I had sounded the depths, I had mastered the
difficulties of African travel. My new friend listened sympathetically
as he drank his whisky-and-soda, and then he flattered my little
vanities as they had never been flattered since I had set out on my
journeyings.
“Not one woman in ten thousand would have got through.”
I liked it, but I think he was wrong. Any woman who had once started
would have got through simply and solely because there was absolutely
nothing else to be done. It is a great thing in life to find there is
only one way.
Then Dr Duff descended to commonplace matters.
“I hope you don't mind,” said he; “I've kicked your policeman.”
“That,” said I, “is a thing he has been asking someone to do ever since
we left Sekondi a thousand years ago.”