_The Spanish nuns--One of the loneliest settlements in West
Africa--Hospitality and swamp--A capable English woman--A big future
in store for Addah--The mosquitoes of Addah--The glorious
skies--Difficulties of getting away--A tremendous tornado--The bar
steamer--The boiling bar--“We've had enough!”--Would rather be
drowned in the open--The dismantled ship--Everybody stark--The gallant
engineer--On the French steamer bound for Accra._
At Addah, at the mouth of the Volta, a place that exists solely for the
transport, there is the very worst surf on all this surf-bound coast.
There is a big native town a few miles up the river, but here at its
entrance live the handful of Europeans, either right on the beach or on
the banks of the river, over a mile away, with a great swamp between.
The river is wide at its mouth, and the miles of swamp lend to the
country an air at once weird and austere.
“Enter not here,” cries the surf; “enter not here.” But when its dangers
have been dared, and the white man has set foot on the Dark Continent,
the swamp takes up the refrain in another key, more sullenly
threatening.
“In spite of warning you have crossed the outworks. Now, see how you
like the swamp and the mosquito, the steaming heat and the blazing sun.”
And men come still, as they came three or four hundred years ago.
But I, for one, did not much like the landing. The Captain of the
_Bathurst_ explained that he had had no intention of calling at Addah,
but hearing that there was a white woman on the beach wanting to go, he
of his courtesy had decided to take her, and he wanted to be off as he
wished to discharge cargo at Pram-Pram before it grew dark. And here,
for once, on board an African steamer I found the women passengers
largely outnumbering the men, for they had on board a number of nuns who
had been exiled from San Paul de Loanda. They were Spanish, French, and
German Sisters in the costume of their order; gentle, kindly women with
faces that bore evident marks of an indoor life in the Tropics, a mark
that cannot be mistaken. They had been very very frightened at first,
and they were still very seasick, but the sailormen had made them most
kindly welcome, for their sakes were staunch Monarchists when Portugal
was spoken of, and they brought them the captain's cat to play with, and
looked with deepest admiration on their wonderful embroidery. Never was
so much sewing before seen on an African steamer.
I unwittingly added to their woes, for the surf was bad at Addah.
“We'll whistle and the bar steamer will come out for you,” said the
captain, and the steamer gave vent to the most heartrending wails.
In the distance I could see a most furious white surf, a palm or two
cutting the sky line, and a speck or two that were probably bungalows,
but it was a typical African shore and I didn't like the look of it at
all. It is bad enough to go to a place uninvited, not to know where
you are going to be put up, but when to that is added a bad surf, you
wish--well, you wish it was well over. The ship rolled sickeningly in
the swell; the Sisters, first one and then another, disappeared, to come
back with faces in all shades of green whiteness, and the ruddy-faced
captain paced the deck with an impatience that he in vain tried to
control, and I felt an unutterable brute. If I had been seasick it would
have crowned things; luckily for myself I am not given that way. At
intervals the _Bathurst_ let off shrieks, plaintive and angry, and we
went to lunch. I felt I might as well have luncheon, a luncheon to which
I really had a right.
“You'll have to come on with us to Pram-Pram,” said the captain; “the
beach is evidently too bad.”
But presently, after luncheon, we saw a surf boat making its way towards
us, and the captain through the glasses proclaimed, “Custom's boat. No
white man. The surf is very bad.”
When the boat same alongside, the black Custom officer said the captain
was right. The surf was bad. They had rather hesitated about coming out,
but the bar steamer in the river could not come out till to-morrow.
“Will you land,” said the captain, “or shall we take you on?”
It seemed a pity to pass Addah, now I had come so near, and if the
Customs could get through I did not see why I should not, so I got into
the mammy-chair and was lowered into the surf boat with my servant and
my gear. A surf boat is about five feet deep, and this time, as no one
had expected a white woman to land, no chair had been provided, so I was
obliged to balance myself on one of the narrow planks that ran
across the boat and served as seats, and of course my feet dangled
uncomfortably. Also, as we approached it, the surf looked most
threatening. We were going straight into a furiously boiling sea with
white, foam-lashed waves that flung themselves high into the air. I did
not like the look of it at all, but as we were bound to go through it, I
whisked myself round on my seat so that I sat with my back to the thing
I was afraid of. Then the Custom-house officer, a black man, edged his
way close beside me, and stretching out his hand put it on my arm. I did
not like it. I object to being touched by black men, so I promptly shook
it off, and as promptly the boat was apparently flung crash against a
stone wall; she had really hit the beach, and over I went backwards and
head first into the bottom of the boat. The man's help had been kindly
meant; he would have held me in my place. But there is no time for
apologies when a surf boat reaches the beach. Before I had realised what
was happening, two Kroo boys had dived to the bottom of the boat, seized
me without any ceremony whatever, and raced me up to the shore, where
they put me down in all the blazing sun of an African afternoon, without
even a helmet or an umbrella to protect my head. Grant followed with the
helmet, and I endeavoured to smooth my ruffled plumes. At least, I had
landed in safety, and the thing was now to find the Commissioner and
see what he would do for me. We were on a beach where apparently was not
even a boat, only the forlorn remains of the wreck of an iron steamer
rapidly coming to its last end. The shore, rising to a height of about
six or eight feet, was all sand with a little sparse, coarse grass
upon it. We climbed up the yielding bank, and then I saw a native town,
Beachtown, on my right, and on my left three or four bungalows built
after the English fashion, on high posts rising out of cement platforms.
Those bungalows at Beachtown, Addah, are perhaps the forlornest places
on all the West-African coast. The wild surf is in front of them, the
coarse grass all around them, and behind is a great swamp. Brave, brave,
it seemed to me, must be the men and women who lived here and kept their
health. The strong sea breeze would be healthgiving, but the deadly
monotony of life must be something too terrible. But here the doctor,
who was going home by the next steamer, had his wife, and the doctor who
had just come out had brought his bride; two women, and I was told there
was a third at the transport station. The Commissioner came forward, and
I looked at him doubtfully. I had thought I should have known him and I
didn't.
“You have forgotten me?”
Yes; I certainly ought to know him, but--it came on me with a flash, and
I spoke my thoughts. “Ah, but you have grown a beard since I met you.”
He laughed and blushed.
“I've just come off trek and I've lost my razors.”
It was so like Africa. The dishevelled woman from the sea met the
unkempt man from the bush, and we foregathered.
They were awfully good to me. Packed they were already with two more
people than the bungalows were intended to hold, and so they considered
what they should do for me, and while they were considering, hearing
I had had luncheon, they gave me coffee and other drinks and offered
cigarettes, and then they wrote to the transport company and asked them
if they would take in a stray woman.
The kindness of these people in Africa! Can I ever repay it? I know, of
course, I never can. The head of Swanzy's transport and his pretty wife
sent over to say they would be delighted to have me, and I was to come
at once and consider myself at home. And, moreover, they had sent a cart
for me, drawn by three Kroo boys.
I have said many hard things about the English women in West Africa.
I had begun to think, after my visit to Accra, that only the nursing
Sisters were worthy of the name of capable women; but, when I went to
Addah, my drooping hopes revived. For I met there, in Mrs Dyson, the
transport officer's wife, a woman, charming, pretty, and young, who yet
thought it not beneath her dignity to look after her husband's house, to
see that he lived well here in the wilderness, and who enjoyed herself
and made the very best of life.
And Addah, I must admit, takes a deal of making the best of. It has been
settled for long years. In Beachtown you may see old guns; in Big Addah,
a native town six miles up the Volta, you may see more of them lying
about the rough, uncared-for streets, and you may see here a clump of
tamarind trees that evidently mark the spot where once the fort has
been. Not one stone of it remains. The authorities say that these “old
shells of forts” are not worth preserving, and the natives have taken
them literally at their word, and incorporated the very stones in their
own buildings.
I am sorry, for Addah at the mouth of the great river must have been a
great slaving station once; trade must have come down the river in the
past, even as it does now, as it will do, doubled and trebled, in the
future.
The house I stayed in was close on the river, and my bedroom opened
out on to a verandah that overlooked it. In the shipbuilding yard below
perpetually rings the clang of iron on the anvil, for always there are
ships to be built or repaired; and there, grown into a great cotton tree
in that yard, may be seen the heavy chains that the slavers of oldtime
used to hold their ships to the shore. The slavers have gone, the past
is dead; but, knowing that wonderful river, I do not mind prophesying
that, in spite of that dangerous surf, in spite of those threatening
swamps, there is a big future in store for that lonely outpost of the
Empire. That sixty-five miles of unimpeded waterway that lies between
it and Akuse is not to be lightly disregarded, and the rich country goes
far beyond that.
But, at present, there is not much to see at Addah. There is the swamp,
apparently miles of it, there is a great, wide, mangrove-fringed river,
and there are the never-to-be-forgotten mosquitoes. The mosquitoes of
Addah are the sort that make you feel you should go about armed, and
that made me feel for once that a mosquito-proof house was an actual
necessity. One thing, there is always a strong breeze blowing at Addah,
and my hostess was always very particular to have her wire-netting swept
down carefully every day so that every scrap of air that could come in
did so, and I conclude it was owing to this that I did not feel the air
so vitiated and oppressive as I have in other houses. I hope one of the
next public works of the Gold Coast will be to fill in that swamp, and
so rid the place of those terrible mosquitoes. One solace the white
people have, if there are mosquitoes, there is no undergrowth, and so
there are no tsetse flies, and they can keep horses. My hostess's two
solitary amusements--because she was a smiling, happy-faced girl she
made the best of them--were to ride along the beach and to play tennis
after it had grown cool in the evening, as it always does in Africa
before the sun goes down. And those sunsets across the swamp, too, were
something to wonder at. Purple and red and gold were they. Every night
the sun died in a glory over swamp and heath; every morning he rose
golden and red across the wide river, as if he would say that if Addah
had naught else to recommend it there was always the eternal beauty of
the skies.
[Illustration: 0435]
But having got there it was rather difficult to get away.
The _Sapele_, they said, should come and take me back to Sekondi or, at
least, to Accra, but the _Sapele_ did not come, and if my hosts had not
been the kindest in the world I should have begun to feel uncomfortable.
I would gladly have gone overland, but carriers were not, even though
some of my precious pots had been broken in the surf, and so my loads
were reduced.
But every day there was no steamer, till at last a German steamer was
signalled, and the bar steamer, a steamer of 350 tons, which usually
lay at the little wharf just outside my bedroom window alongside the
shipbuilding yard, prepared to go out. All my gear was carried down and
put on board, and then suddenly the captain appeared on the verandah and
pointed out to us two waiting women a threatening dark cloud that was
gathering all across the eastern sky.
He shook his head, “I dare not go out till that is over.” And so we stood
and waited and watched the storm gather.
It was a magnificent sight. The inky sky was reflected in an inky river,
an ominous hush was over everything, one felt afraid to breathe, and the
halfnaked workmen in the yard dropped their tools and fled to shelter.
The household parrot gave one loud shriek, and the harsh sound of his
call cut into the stillness like a knife.
From the distance we could hear the roaring of the surf, as if it were
gathering strength, and then the grasses in the swamp to the west bent
before a puff of air that broke on the stillness. There was another
puff, another, and then the storm was upon us in all its spendour.
Never have I seen such a storm. Though it was only four o'clock in
the afternoon, it was dark as night, and the lightning cut across like
jagged flame, there came immediately the crash of thunder, and then a
mighty roaring wind, a wind that swept everything before it, that bent
the few trees almost to the ground, that stripped them of their leaves
as if they had been feathers shaken out of a bag, that beat the placid
river into foam, and tore great sheets of corrugated iron from the roofs
of the buildings and tossed them about the yard as if they had been so
many strips of muslin.
The bar steamer's captain had gone at the first sign to see that his
moorings were safe, and we two women stood on the verandah and watched
the fury of the elements, while my hostess wondered where her husband
was, and hoped and prayed he was not out in it. The inky blackness was
all over the sky now, the wind was shrieking so as to deaden all other
sounds, and the only thing we could hear above it was the crash of the
thunder. And then I looked at the horizon away to the south-west. There,
about a mile away as the crow flies, was the shore, and there against
the inky darkness of the sky I could see tossed high into the air great
sheets of foam. The surf on that shore must have been terrific. I would
have given a good deal to go and see it, but, before I could make up my
mind to start, down came the rain in torrents, the horizon was blotted
out, the road through the swamp was running like a mill race, and it
looked as if it would be no light task to beat my way through wind and
rain to the shore.
And when the storm was subsiding back came the bar steamer's captain.
“No going out to-day,” said he; “I wouldn't dare risk the bar. Look at
the surf!” and he pointed across the swamp to where we could again see
the great white clouds of foam rising against the horizon. “To-morrow,”
he said, “very early”; and he went away, and my host, soaked through
and through, came back and told us what the storm had looked like from
Beachtown.
The next morning was simply glorious. The world was fresh and clean
and newly washed, and the river, from my window, looked like a brightly
polished mirror.
“It'll be a bad bar, though,” said my host, shaking his head. “Better
stay.”
It was very kind of him, but I felt I had trespassed on their kindness
long enough; besides, there were other parts of the Coast I wished to
see, and I felt I must take this opportunity of getting out of Addah.
What was a bad bar? I had faced the surf before. So I bid them farewell,
with many grateful thanks, and went on board, and in all the glory of
the morning we set off down the river.
I was the only white passenger on board, and was allowed to stand on the
bridge beside the wheel. Behind me was a little house wherein I might
have taken shelter, but I thought I might as well see all there was
to be seen; besides, I held my camera in my hand and proposed to take
photographs of this “bad bar.”
The mouth of the Volta is utterly lonely looking. A long sandpit ran out
on the right hand, whereon grew a solitary bush, blighted, for there was
not a sign of a leaf upon it, and to the left was also sand, with a
few scattered palms. I fancy there must have been a native hut or two,
though I do not remember them, for I remember the captain saying, “We
have to make our own marks. When you get a hut in line with a certain
tree you know you are in the channel.” I was glad to hear there was a
channel, for to my uninitiated eyes we seemed heading for a wild waste
of boiling water, worse than anything I had ever conceived of, and yet
I was not unaccustomed to surf, and had faced it before now in a surf
boat. Never again shall I face surf with equanimity. I tried to carry
out my programme, but I fear I must have been too upset to withdraw the
slides, for I got no photographs. Presently we appeared to be right
in the middle of the swirl. The waves rose up like mountains on either
side, and towards us would come a great smooth green hill of water which
towered far above our heads and then, breaking, swept right over us with
a tremendous crash. I can see now the sunlight on that hill; it made it
look like green glass, and then, when the foam came, there were all the
colours of the rainbow. Again and again the two men at the wheel were
flung off, their cloths seemed to be ripped from them as if they had
been their shells, and the ship trembled from stem to stern and stood
still. I thought, “Is this a bad bar? I'm afraid, I'm afraid,” but as
the captain came scrambling to the wheel to take the place of the men
who had been thrown off I did not quite like to say anything. It
is extraordinary how hard it is to make one believe there really is
anything to fear, and I should hate to be a nuisance at a critical
moment, so I said to the captain--he and I and the German engineer were
the only white people on board: “It's magnificent.”
He was holding on to the wheel by my side and a naked black man,
stripped by the ruthless water, was holding on to it on the other, and I
could see the moisture on his strained face. Was it sweat or sea water?
“Magnificent!” said he. “Don't you see we can't stand it? We've had
enough!”
So that was it. We were going down. At least, not exactly going down,
but the water was battering us to pieces. I learned then that what I
was afraid of was fear, for now I was not afraid. It had come, then,
I thought. This was the end of the life where sometimes I had been so
intensely happy and sometimes I had been so intensely miserable that
I had wanted to die. Not so very long ago, and now I was going to die.
Presently those waters that were soaking me through and through would
wash over me once for all and I was not even afraid. I thought nothing
for those few moments, except how strange that it was all over. I
wondered if I had better go into the little house behind me, but no,
I saw I was not in the way of the men at the wheel. I could hear the
crashing of broken wood all round me, and I thought if I were to be
drowned I would rather be drowned in the open. Why I held on to my
camera I do not know. That, I think, was purely mechanical. The waves
beat on the ship from all quarters, and so apparently held her steady,
and I might just as well hold on to the camera as to anything else. I
certainly never expected to use it again. Crash, crash, crash came the
tons of water, there was a ripping of broken wood, and a human wail that
told me that crew and black passengers had realised their danger. Crash,
crash, crash. It seemed to me the time was going very slowly, and then
suddenly the ship seemed to give a leap forward, and instead of the
waves crashing on to us we were riding over them, and the captain seized
me by the arm.
“Come inside. You're wet to the skin.”
“But------”
“We're all right. But, my God, you'll never be nearer to it.”
And then I looked around me to see the havoc that the bar had wrought.
The bulwarks were swept away, the boats were smashed, the great
crane for working cargo was smashed and useless, the galley was
swept overboard, the top of the engine-house was broken in, and,
transformation scene, every solitary creature on board that little
ship, with the exception of the captain and me, was stark. Custom-house
officers had stripped off their uniforms, clerks who had come to tally
cargo in all the glory of immaculate shirts and high-starched collars
were nude, and the black men who worked the ship had got rid of their
few rags as superfluous. Everyone had made ready to face the surf.
“Much good would it have done 'em,” opined the captain; “no living thing
could have got ashore in that sea.”
Then up came the chief engineer, a German; his face was scalded and his
eyes were bloodshot, and it was to him we all owed our lives.
The waves had beaten in the top of the engine-room, and the water had
poured in till it was flush with the fires; a gauge blew out--I am
not sure if I express myself quite rightly, but the place was full of
scalding steam, and all those educated negro engineers fled, but the
white man stuck to his job.
“I tink it finish,” said he, “when I see the water come close close to
the fires, but I say, 'well, as well dis vay as any oder,' so I stick to
do my job, an' I not see, I do it by feel.”
And we all three shook hands, and the captain and engineer had a glass
of whisky, and though it was so early in the morning, never did I think
it was more needed. I had been but an onlooker. On them had fallen the
burden and heat of the day.
And then came boats, bringing on board the captains of the French and
German steamers that lay in the roadstead, far out, because the surf was
so bad.
They had been watching us. They thought we were gone, but though they
had out their boats they confessed they would have been powerless to
aid. No boat could have lived in such a sea, and the captain declared
that though he was swept bare of all food nothing would induce him to go
back. It would be certain death.
We looked a rather forlorn wreck, but the German captain came to the
rescue with a seaman-like goodwill, lending men to work the cargo in
place of the broken-down crane, and giving food to the hungry ones. He
had come from Lome, and he brought news that the hurricane of the night
before had swept away the bridge that had been the pride and delight of
the people of Togo, and that never for many a long year had there been
such a storm along the Guinea Coast. He had been unable to get his
papers and had come away without them. He would take me if I liked, but
he must go back to Lome.
But I was rather feeling I had had enough of the sea, and so I turned to
the Frenchman. He was just as kind and courteous. His ship was small, he
said, and he was not going to Sekondi, but I might tranship at Accra
if I liked. The captain of the bar steamer advised my going on board at
once, for his ship was in a state of confusion, and also he was going to
tranship cargo.
Then Grant took a hand in the proceedings. Whether he had stripped I
don't know, for I did not see him, but he presented himself before me in
a very wet and damp condition.
“Medicine chest gone, Ma.”
Now, the medicine chest was my soldier brother's, the pride of my heart.
I had proposed to bring it back to him and show him that the only time
it had been used in this unhealthy climate was when the carrier had
inadvertantly got cascara for his pneumonia. Well, it was gone, and
there was nothing more to be said. Its pristine beauty had been lost in
the rains in Togo. Grant departed, but presently he was on the bridge
again.
“Pots be all bruck, Ma.”
“Oh, Grant!” I had got them so far only to lose them in the end. Grant
was like one of Job's comforters. He seemed to take a huge delight in
announcing to me fresh disasters. My things were all done up small for
carrying on men's heads, and the sea had played havoc with them. The
bucket was gone; the kettle, an old and tried servant, was gone; the
water-bottle was gone, so was the lantern; the chop box had been burst
open, and the plates and cups smashed; while the knives and forks had
been washed overboard, and the majority of my boots, for some reason
or other, had followed. After Grant had made about his tenth journey,
announcing fresh disasters, I said:
“Oh, never mind, Grant. We must make the best of it; I'm rather
surprised we are not gone ourselves,” and with a grin he saw to the
handing of the remains of my goods into the boat, and getting them on
board the steamer.
That steamer was tiny. I looked at the cabin assigned me, and determined
if I had to sit up all night I would not occupy it, and then I had my
precious black box brought on deck, and proceeded to count the damage.
It was locked and it was supposed to be air-tight and water-tight. I
can't say about the air-tight, but water-tight it certainly was not, for
every single thing in that box was soaked through and through. I took
them out one by one; then, as no one said me nay, I tied them on to
the taffrail, and let my garments flutter out in the breeze and the
sunshine. There were four French women on board, bound from the French
Congo to Konakri, and they took great interest and helped me with
suggestions and advice, but I must say I was glad that I was bound
for Sekondi, where my kind friend the nursing Sister was keeping fresh
garments for me. As for my poor little typewriter, it was so drenched
with water that, though I stood it out in the sun, I foresaw its career
in West Africa was over.
As the sun was setting, came on board the captain of the bar steamer to
bid me God-speed. We had never met till the day before, but that morning
we had faced death together, and it made a bond.
“Go back to-night?” said he; “not if I know it. Not for a week, if that
surf doesn't go down. I couldn't face it.”
I wanted him to stay and dine, because I knew he had nothing, but he
told me how good the German had been, and said he did not like leaving
his own ship after dark; so we said “good-bye” with, I hope, mutual
respect, and, after dinner, I began to consider how I should spend the
night. I knew my own bedding must be rather wet, but I knew, also, the
camp-bed would be all right, and I told Grant to bring it up on deck and
make it up with bedding from the Frenchman's bunk.
“They no give you cabin, Ma,” said he, surprised.
Nothing would induce a child of Nature to sleep in the open as long as
he can find any sort of a cuddy-hole to stew in. I was a little afraid
of what the French captain might say, but he took my eccentricity calmly
enough.
“Ah, zat your bed? Ah, zat is good idea”; and left me to a night rolling
beneath the stars, when I tossed and dreamed and woke with a start,
thinking that the great green hills of water were about to overwhelm me;
and as about twenty times more terrified of the dream than I had been of
the reality.
Next morning found us outside Accra, a long way outside, because the
surf was bad, and I found to my dismay there was no mail in yet, and I
must land, for there was no cargo for the _Gergovia_, and she wanted to
go on her way.
I found the landing terrible. I can frankly say I have never been so
frightened, and I had no nerve left to stand up against the fear. But it
was done. I saw my friend in Accra, and again recounted with delight my
travels. For the first time I began to feel I had done something, and I
felt it still more when the people in Schenk & Barber's, a great trading
firm, held up their hands and declared that I had done a wonderful thing
to cross by Krobo Hill at night. I had done well, then, I kept saying
to myself, I had accomplished something; but I must admit I was most
utterly done. When the mail steamer arrived, the port officer made it
his business to see me off to the ship himself; we were drenched to
the skin as we rounded the breakwater, and I was so nervous when the
mammy-chair came dangling overhead from the ship's deck, that I hear he
reported I was the worst traveller he had ever been on board with. Then,
in addition to my woes, instead of being able to sit and chat and tell
my adventures comfortably to the friends I met, I was, for the first
time for many a long year, most violently seasick.
But, when I went to bed, I slept dreamlessly, and when I awakened we
were rising to the swell outside Sekondi, and I felt that even if I had
to face the surf again I should be among friends presently, and there
was a feeling of satisfaction in the thought that I had at least seen
something of the most beautiful river in the world, and some unknown
country in the east of the Colony.
Always there is that in life, for, good or evil, nothing can take
away what we have done. We have it with us, good or bad, for ever. Not
Omnipotence can alter the past.