off to sleep again for a quarter of an hour, then am aroused by
some enterprising sightseers pushing open the window-shut-
ters; when I look round there áre a mass of black heads
sticking through the window-hole. I tell them respectfully
that the circus is closed for repairs, and fasten up the shutters,
but sleep is impossible, so I turn out and go and see what
those men of mine are after. They are comfortable enough
round their fire, with their clothes suspended on strings in the
smoke above them, and I envy them that fire. I then stroll
round to see if there is anything to be seen, but the scenery is
much like that you would enjoy if you were inside a blancmange.
So as it is now growing dark I return to my room
and light candles, and read Dr. Giinther on Fishes. If this
sort of weather goes on I expect I shall specialise fins and
gills myself. Room becomes full of blacks. Unless you
watch the door, you do not see how it is done. You look at
a corner one minute and it is empty, and the next time you
look that way it is full of rows of white teeth and watching
eyes. The two mission teachers come in and make a show of
teaching a child to read the Bible. I, having decided that it
does not matter much what kind of fins you wear as they all
work well, write up my log. About seven I get cook to make
me some more tea, and shortly after find myself confronted
with difficulties as to the disposal of the two mission teachers
for the night. This class of man has no resource in him, and
I think worse of the effects of mission-teaching than usual as
I prepare to try and get a sleep ; not an elaborate affair, I
assure you, for I only want to wrap myself round in a blanket
and lie on that plank, but the rain has got into the blankets
and horror ! there is no pillow. The mission men have cleared
their bed paraphernalia right out. Now you can do without a
good many things, but not without a pillow, so hunt round to
find something to make one with ; find the Bible in English,
the Bible in German, and two hymn-books, and a candle-'stick.
These seem all the small articles in the room— no, there is A
parcel behind the books— mission teachers’ Sunday trousers—
make delightful arrangement of books bound round with
trousers and the whole affair wrapped in one of my towels.
Never saw till now advantage of Africans having troüsers.
Civilisation has its points after all. But it is no use
trying to get any sleep until those men are quieter. The
partition which separates my apartment from theirs is a bamboo
and mat affair, straight at the top so leaving under the
roof a triangular space above common to both rooms. Also
common to both rooms are the smoke of the fire and the conversation.
Kefalla is holding forth in a dogmatic way, and
some of the others are snoring. There is a new idea in decoration
along the separating wall. Mr. Morris might have made
something out of it for a dado. It is composed of an arrangement
in line of stretched out singlets. Vaseline the revolver.
Wish those men would leave off chattering. Kefalla seems
to know the worst about most of the people, black and
white, down in Ambas Bay, but I do not believe those last
two stories. Evidently great jokes in next room now ; Kefalla
has thrown himself, still talking, in the dark, on to the top of
one of the mission teachers. The women of the village outside
have been keeping up, this hour and more, a most
melancholy coo-ooing. Those foolish creatures are evidently
worrying about their husbands who have gone down to market
in Ambas Bay, and who, they think, are lost in the bush. I have
not a shadow of a doubt that those husbands who.are not home
by now are safely drunk in town, or reposing on the grand new
road the kindly Government have provided for them, either in
one of the side drains, or tucked in among the lava rock.
September 2 ist.— Coo-ooing went on all-night. I was aroused
about 9.30 P.M., by uproar in adjacent h u t: one husband had
returned in a bellicose condition and whacked his wives, and
their squarks and squalls, instead of acting as a warning to
the other ladies, stimulate the silly things to go on coo-ooing
louder and more entreatingly than ever, so that their husbands
might come home and whack them too, I suppose, and whenever
the unmitigated hardness of my plank rouses me I hear them
still coo-ooing.
No watchman is required to wake you in the morning
on the top of a Cameroon foot-hill by 5.30, because about
4 A.M. the dank chill that comes before the dawn does so most
effectively. One old chief turned up early out of the mist
and dashed me. a bottle of palm wine ; he says he wants to