arm, and wind it lazily round and round some grand column
o f a tree-stem, to the height of ten or twenty feet from the
ground, spread out its top like a plume and then fall back
again to the mist-river from which it came. It has weird ways,
this mist of the West Coast. I have often, when no one has
been near to form opinions of my frivolity, played with
it, scooping it up in my hands and letting it fall again, or
swished it about with a branch, when it lay at a decent level
•of three or four feet from the ground. When it comes higher
and utterly befogs you, you don’t feel much inclination to
play with it. The worst of it is, you never quite know how
high it is coming. I have seen it rise out of Bimbia flats and
cover the Great Cameroon as though it said, “ Ah you are
Grand Mungo, but I am grander-^-I am Death.”
I drop off to sleep now and then, only to be aroused
■either by the Lafayette having dragged her anchor and got
•off skylarking with a lot of rough rocks so that she must
be rescued and re-anchored, or by ejaculations from under
the sail because of that ram. The tent amidships woujd
afford a series of fine studies for any one who wanted to
illustrate anything a la Dore; it looks like a great grave-cloth
spread over a tumbled heap of corpses, which vaguely show
their outlines through its heavy white folds. When my crew
do a good writhe they are particularly fine. My attention
gets riveted on them because one of them has an abominable
quavering, hysterical, falsetto snore, which, as I want to go
to sleep myself, rouses in my mind a desire to slay the performer,
for that snore cuts through the sound of the surf
on to my nerves like a knife. Three times during the night
I arose, and grasping the stump of a plantain bunch and
walking along the thwarts, hovered, like a revengeful fiend,
over the shrouded sleepers, hesitating for a few minutes to
locate the seat of the disorder, for I used all suitable care
and precaution to avoid hitting the innocent, but this is
difficult, for the snore seems to come from underneath the
upper layer, whose heads show through the sail like plums
through a pie-crust, so I am regretfully compelled to take
swipes at the excrescence nearest the source of the nuisance.
This remedy is only a temporary one, but during the lull it
produces I fall asleep, after the third application firmly,
and do not wake up until the scratching of the crew to extricate
itself from under the sail arouses me, and I then find
my head under the seat and my unlucky body bent wherever
nature had omitted to provide a joint. I have to get up and
undo the sail, for I had tied the ends of it securely together to
bottle up some of the noise last time the snore aroused me.
August 10th.— The morning breaks gray, cheerless and chilly,
the sea looks angry and wicked. For half-an-hour, while the
crew are getting things straight, I comb my tangled hair and
meditate on the problem “ Why did I come to Africa ? ” This
done we heave up anchor and shove off at about 5.30 A.M. and
from that time till 145 go along near in-shore on the land
breeze, among the rollers. I do not cite this as the proper
course to lay, but give it as an example of the impossibility of
getting a black crew to run out of smell of land ; they always
like to hug the shore, as not only my own experiences but
those of sympathetic friends with whom I have interchanged
experiences demonstrate. Let the shore be what it may
they cling to it. Poor Mr. S., going from Gaboon to Eloby,
got run well up the Moondah River on one occasion, owing
to this persistent habit, and other adventurers have fared no
better.
The shore along from Akanda to Cape Clara is one to
which any white seaman would give a lot of room. Immediately
south of our anchorage it begins to rise into dwarf
vertical cliffs overhung by bush and trailing plants between
which the cliff-face shows strange-looking slabs of white clay
and rock. The sea plays furiously against them at high tide, and
at low leaves a very narrow beach heavily strewn with immense
rock boulders. By 1.30 we find we cannot get round Cape
Esterias, so run in under the shallow lea of its northern side.
There is here a narrow sand-beach, with plenty of rock on it,
and a semi-vertical and supremely slippery path leading up
to an ostentatiously European plank-built house. We fix up
the Lafayette safely and all go ashore.
The inhabitants of this country have been watching us
beating in, and taking a kindly interest in the performance,
and so as soon as everything is all right they sing out in a
E F, 2