is coming up from below, which argues badly for our trip down
the great wall to the forest camp, which I am anxious to reach
before nightfall after our experience of the accommodation
afforded by our camp in the crater plain last night.
While I am sitting waiting for the men to finish their meal,
I feel a chill at my back, as if some cold thing had settled
there, and turning round, see the mist from the summit above
coming in a wall down towards us. These mists up here,
as far as my experience goes, are always preceded by a strange
breath of ice-cold air— not necessarily a wind.
Bum then draws my attention to a strange funnel-shaped
thing coming down from the clouds to the north. A big
waterspout, I presume: it seems to be moving rapidly N.E.,
and I profoundly hope it will hold that course, for we have
quite as much as we can manage with the ordinary rain-water
supply on this mountain, without having waterspouts to deal
with.
We start off down the mountain as rapidly as we can. Xenia
is very done up, and Head man comes perilously near breaking
his neck by frequent falls among the rocks ; my unlucky boots
are cut through and through by the latter. When we get down
towards the big crater plain, it is a race between us and the
pursuing mist as to who shall reach the camp first, and the
mist wins, but we have just time to make out the camp’s
exact position before it closes round us, so we reach it
without any real difficulty. When we get there, about one
o’clock, I find the men have kept the fires alight and Cook is
asleep before one of them with another conflagration smouldering
in his hair. I get him to .make me tea, while the others
pack up as quickly as possible, and by two we are all off on
our way down to the forest camp.
The boys are nervous in their way of going down over the
mountain wall. The misadventures of Cook alone would fill
volumes. Monrovia boy is out and away the best man at
this work. Just as we reach the high jungle grass, down comes
the rain and up comes the mist, and we have the worst time
we have had during our whole trip, in our endeavours to find
the hole in the forest that leads to our old camp.
Unfortunately, I must needs go in for acrobatic performances
on the top of one of the highest, rockiest hillocks. Poising
myself on one leg I take a rapid slide sideways, ending in a
very showy leap backwards which lands me on the top of the
lantern I am carrying to-day, among miscellaneous rocks.
There being fifteen feet or so of jungle grass above me, all the
dash and beauty of my performance are as much thrown away
as I am, for my boys are too busy on their own accounts in
the mist to miss me. After resting some little time as I fell,
and making and unmaking the idea in my mind that I am
killed, I get up, clamber elaborately to the top of the next
hillock, and shout for the boys, and “ Ma,” “ ma,” comes
back from my flock from various points out of the fog. I
find Bum and Monrovia boy, and learn that during my absence
Xenia, who always fancies himself as a path-finder, has taken
the lead, and gone off somewhere with the rest. We shout
and the others answer, and we join them, and it soon becomes
evident to the meanest intelligence that Xenia had better have
spent his time attending to those things of his instead of
going in for guiding, for we are now right off the track we
made through the grass on our up journey, and we proceed
to have a cheerful hour or so in the wet jungle, ploughing
hither and thither, trying to find our way.
At last we pick up the top of a tongue of forest that we all
feel is ours, but we— that is to say, Xenia and I, for the others go
like lambs to the slaughter wherever they are led— disagree as
to the path. He wants to go down one side of the tongue, I to
go down the other, and I have my way, and we' wade along,
skirting the bushes that fringe it, trying to find our hole. I
own I soon begin to feel shaky about having been right in
the affair, but soon Xenia, who is leading, shouts he has got
it, and we limp in, our feet sore with rugged rocks, and everything
we have on, or in the loads, wringing wet, save the
matches, which providentially I had put into my soap-box.
Anything more dismal than the look of that desired camp
when we reach it, I never saw. Pools of water everywhere.
The fire-house a limp ruin, the camp bed I have been thinking
fondly of for the past hour a water cistern. I tilt the water
out of it, and say a few words to it regarding its hide-bound
idiocy in obeying its military instructions to be waterproof;