Time is of no value whatever to these wild and woolly savages, and as we had of necessity to get together a small army of several hundred "supers," literally weeks elapsed before we were ready. I chafed dreadfully at the delay, but there was no help for it. The requisite number of natives had to be laboriously collected from a score or more of villages scattered over a wide area of country, and then, when we had got them together, everything had to be explained to them over and over again through the medium of three or four different interpreters. In fact, it was nothing but talk, talk, talk, palaver, palaver, palaver, from morning till night.

There was considerable difficulty, too, in getting them to face the camera. Like most savages, these Togo natives have an inherent rooted aversion to being photographed. Luckily, however, Major Schomburgk had taken moving pictures of some of their villages during a previous expedition he had led into these parts, and some of the very natives we had engaged figured in them.

So, as we had brought a projecting machine with us, we made shift to rig up a screen, and showed them themselves, their wives and their little ones, going about their ordinary avocations in their own homes. The effect was instantaneous. They had, of course, seen ordinary photographs before, but none of them had ever beheld any moving pictures. Now they all wanted to come into one; and whereas before the most of them hung back, they were now only too anxious to push themselves in the forefront of every scene.

Only one act they shirked. This was a battle scene in which several of the warriors were supposed to be slain. We had the greatest difficulty in persuading even one native to "act dead." Their objection, they explained, was due to the fact that they believed that if they played at being dead before the white man's mysterious machine, they would most likely be dead in reality before morning.

At length, by the promise of a liberal bonus, one warrior, greatly daring, consented to play the part. The next morning the head interpreter knocked at the door of my hut to inform me that there were "eight dead natives lying in the compound outside."

"What!" I screamed, in great alarm. And, hastily donning my dressing-gown, I ran out.

But I need not have got scared. The eight were not really defunct. They were merely shamming death, and wanted me to see how well they could do it, with a view to being taken on for the part in the forthcoming day's rehearsal.

The one who had played dead the day before had not of course died during the night, as they more than half expected he would have done, and they were consequently now only too willing and anxious to follow the lead he had set them.

At length the long, wearisome series of preliminary rehearsals came to an end. Everybody was supposed to be part perfect, and we made ready to film the play.

Up to this I had, of course, rehearsed in ordinary attire. Now I had to don native dress; and as I am a stickler for realism I insisted—against Major Schomburgk's advice—in playing in bare feet and legs, bare shoulders and arms, and with no head covering.

As the principal scenes were laid out of doors in the middle of the bush, and under a blazing tropical sun, this, as was pointed out to me, was a pretty "big order." Nevertheless, I thought I could "stick it"; and, as a matter of fact, I did, though I suffered for it afterwards.

My part was, of course, that of the "White Goddess." I was supposed to have been cast ashore as a babe on the coast of Togo, and taken up-country by the savages who found me, and who afterwards placed me in charge of their principal ju-ju shrine, paying me, in the course of time, almost divine honours.

I had grown to womanhood without ever having seen one of my own colour and race, and when a white hunter (Major Schomburgk) was taken prisoner by the tribe whose high priestess I was, I was naturally attracted to him. Bound hand and foot, he was cast into a hut, preparatory to being put to death. I had to free him from his bonds, and guide him in a wild flight for freedom over rocks and bushes, through foaming streams, and up hill and down dale.

All this I did. It is the great scene of the play, and to film it took one whole day. Major Schomburgk had given strict orders for all our eight hundred or so of supers to muster at 6 A.M. sharp, but with the irritating perverseness of natives they did not put in an appearance until 10 A.M., when, of course, the sun was already high in the heavens.

This added tremendously to my trials and tribulations, and was, in fact, to a great extent the cause of my subsequent breakdown. By noon, when the sun was directly overhead, it was so hot that the operator was unable to bear to touch with his ungloved hand the brass work of his machine.

How I got through the afternoon's work I don't know to this day. I managed it somehow. There is a marvellous sustaining power in the mere nervous tension of acting, and the click, click, click of the camera helps to keep one tuned up as it were. But directly it was all over I fell fainting on my camp bed in my hut, and the doctor had to be called in. My feet were all cut and scarred, and full of thorns and jiggers.1 My legs, too, were pretty badly scratched and torn. And, to crown all, I had got a "touch of the sun."

The next day I was in a high fever, and the day after that in a higher one. Malaria had gripped me, and I really thought at one time that my first African photo-play rehearsal was going to be my last one. Even the doctor looked grave after the first week or so. "You have got malarial fever," he explained, "and you have got it pretty badly. Your spleen is about four times larger than it ought to be, and if you cough it will probably burst."

As at that time I was troubled with an almost incessant cough, this was not consoling. However, liberal doses of quinine, repeated at frequent intervals, cured me at last, and in order to celebrate my convalescence, as soon as I felt well enough I prepared a little dinner with my own hands, and invited Baron Codelli and Major Schomburgk to my hut to partake of it.

I rather fancy myself as a cook, and I had prepared, as the pièce de résistance, a couple of nice plump fowls. When the dish was uncovered my guests glanced sharply at one another, turned very red, and looked quite uncomfortable.

I could not make out what was the matter, and in my usual impetuous way, I blurted out, plump and plain, the question that was uppermost in my mind.

"Is there anything wrong with the chickens?"

This was too much for their gravity. Both the baron and Schomburgk burst into fits of uncontrollable laughter, and the former ran to fetch his diary.

"Look here," he said, pointing to one of the last entries, "I have already, during the years I have spent in this benighted country, eaten 9863 chickens. Schomburgk has probably eaten pro rata at least as many"—the major nodded—"and now you give us two more as a treat! O Lord!"

I joined in their laughter then. I had to. And, after all, my little dinner passed off excellently well, for of course there were other dishes. Meanwhile I had learnt one more African lesson. Never, never, NEVER offer your guests chicken if there is anything else under the sun obtainable by hook or by crook. Cheese and crackers, if you like; or tinned salmon, or sardines, or even "bully" beef. But the domestic fowl, regarded as more or less of a luxury in Europe, is in Africa absolutely tabu. It is the one article of flesh diet that is all-pervading everywhere out there, and which everybody consequently soon heartily sickens of. As well might one offer a dish of salmon to an Alaskan fisherman; or a ragout of mutton to an Australian boundary rider.

Another lesson I learnt during my long and wearisome illness was never to kill a lizard, the reason being that lizards eat insects, and insects of innumerable and most diverse kinds constitute the principal pests of equatorial Africa. The houses out there swarm with lizards, and they are big ones too, fully eighteen inches or more in length. Nobody dreams of interfering with them. On the contrary, they are everywhere petted and made much of. One old fellow I got quite attached to, and he to me. I always knew him from the others because he had only three legs, having lost the other, probably in an encounter with one of his kind. He was as good as a watch. I used to call him my tea-time lizard, because he always put in an appearance precisely at four o'clock every afternoon.

Schomburgk used to tell me that every lizard was responsible for killing and eating I don't know how many hundreds—or was it thousands?—of white ants daily. Very likely. But all the same the ants did not seem to me to diminish perceptibly. The venomous and vicious little pests swarmed everywhere in incredible numbers. Nothing seemed to come amiss to them. Our operator declared that he once found a lot of them trying to make a meal off a sixteen-pound cannon-ball that he used as a make-weight to the tripod of his machine to prevent it being blown or knocked over, but this I altogether decline to believe. He must have been—well, mistaken. But I can vouch from bitter personal experience that they will devour, in the course of a single night, photographs hung on the walls, and boots left standing on the floor; and once a detachment of them riddled so badly a strong wooden box in which I kept my letters and papers that it fell to pieces in my hands.

Another troublesome insect pest was a kind of big wood-boring beetle, that made its home chiefly in the beams of the roof. These he would riddle so completely that sooner or later the thatch was practically certain to come tumbling about one's ears. While in between whiles he peppered the interior with sawdust from his carpentering operations to such an extent that I was kept continually busy dusting and sweeping it out.

Later, however, when we trekked further up-country right into the real heart of the unexplored hinterland, I learnt that Africa held other even worse insect pests than white ants and wood-boring beetles. But of these more anon.

CHAPTER III
LIFE AT KAMINA

There seems to be no end to trouble when filming cinema plays in equatorial Africa. No sooner had I recovered from my bout of malarial fever than our leader and producer, Major Schomburgk, was stricken down with it, and everything was at sixes and sevens once more.

However, I employed my interval of enforced leisure in making my temporary home as comfortable as possible, and in getting acquainted with the natives, and so managed to pass the time pleasantly and profitably enough.

My nicest hours were those spent before my hut between four o'clock and dark, after the day's work was done. Then I took my tea, and passed the time of day with the women and girls who came with huge calabashes on their heads to get water.

At first they used to hurry by shyly, with eyes downcast, and without speaking. But I laughed and smiled at them, and by degrees, after the first day or two, we became quite friendly. They were chiefly interested in my needlework and my hair. Then one day a thunderstorm broke suddenly while they were near, and I invited them into my hut for shelter and set my gramophone playing. This delighted them immensely, although for a long while they seemed to be more or less frightened of it.

There are some sweet girls amongst them, and many of them are quite modest in their demeanour, and well-behaved, although in the matter of clothes, of course, they have not much to boast of. The young unmarried girls are some of them quite pretty, with lithe graceful figures, beautifully proportioned busts, and well-shaped arms and shoulders.

All of them have to work hard, however, and the existence of the married women especially seemed to me to be one continuous round of drudgery. In fact, the daily life of a native wife out here might well serve the advanced suffragettes at home as a typical, "terrible example" of what my sex has to put up with from "tyrant man."

She has to rise at dawn, sweep out the homestead, fetch water from the river, often far away, do the scanty family washing, tread out the corn, grind it to flour and make it into porridge, gather and prepare for food various wild roots, herbs, and vegetables, cook the family meals, wash and tend the children, and perform a hundred and one other similar duties, while her lord and master is, for the most part, quietly resting "in the shade of the sheltering palm."

Nevertheless, I am bound to say that the women do not appear to mind it, but seem, on the contrary, to be quite happy and contented. And indeed their lives compare very favourably on the whole with the lives led by many married women of the lower classes in the great cities of England, Germany, and elsewhere.

The native husband is, as a rule, of a good-natured and kindly disposition, tolerant to a fault almost, and passionately fond of his children. Domestic quarrels are rare, and "nagging" on the part of the wife—that great source of strife amongst the lower classes in Europe—is practically unknown in Africa. Then, again, if there are no palaces in Togoland, there are likewise no slums. Everybody is well housed, according to native standards, and they have plenty to eat. The children especially are well looked after in this latter respect. There is no "under feeding" of them, at all events, and a Togo mother would probably regard as an insult any offer on the part of the State to provide "free meals" for her offspring.

The worst class of natives to get along with are those who have been brought continually into association with Europeans, and have acquired thereby an exaggerated notion of their own importance. Our chief interpreter, for instance, required at first a good deal of keeping in his place, although his views on life and things in general used to afford me considerable amusement.

One day, for instance, seeing me rather downcast—it was when I was recovering from my illness—he surprised me by offering to sing to me. I thanked him, and told him to get on with it, expecting to hear some ordinary tuneless native ditty. Instead, he greatly astonished me by singing, in a fairly passable voice, some very nice songs in German.

I complimented him, and asked him where he had learnt them. He said, "At the Catholic Mission." Then he went on to inquire whether I had a mother still living, and on my answering him in the affirmative, he remarked: "I, too, have a mother, a dear good woman, and twenty-five brothers and sisters."

I suppose I looked the astonishment I felt, for he hastened to add that his father had five wives. "My father," he remarked, "is a fine big man, with a good figure, and in Togo, if a man has a good figure, he can get plenty of wives."

As my interpreter possessed what he called "a good figure," I asked him if he had many wives. "Oh no," he replied, in quite an offended tone, "I am a scientist, and I only have one wife."

"How scientist?" was my next question, spoken quite gravely.

"Well," he replied, "I understand German."

"And does your wife understand German too?" I inquired.

"Oh dear, no," he answered, "that is forbidden amongst us, because we hold that it is not good for a woman to be educated."

"And why, pray?" I asked.

"Well," he said, "supposing I return home to-night and issue some instructions to my wife, she would probably, assuming her to have been educated, reply: 'Talk to yourself, my husband, not to me; you cannot teach me anything; I am as clever as you are.' As it is, however, she just obeys my instructions, and says nothing. It is better so."

I was inclined to laugh just at first at this example of negro philosophy, when it suddenly struck me that I had listened to very similar sentiments expressed by men in far more civilised communities. "The girl I shall choose for my wife," I once overheard an eminent lawyer remark, "will not be one of your new-fangled sort, all fads and fancies, but one of the good old-fashioned kind, who will faithfully minister to the comfort of my home and willingly share my bed."

London lawyer and Togo interpreter—there was scarcely a pin to choose between them as regards their outlook on marital life and its duties and obligations. Both cherished at bottom precisely the same sentiments, and neither's ideal of femininity was one whit higher than the other's.

I also had some differences with my cook. He demanded a lot of money for "extras," and so forth, and the results were, as a rule, distinctly disappointing. I was especially struck with the toughness and tastelessness of the meat served at table, until I discovered, quite by accident, that he was in the habit of making soup out of it for his family and relations, we getting the solid—very much solid—residuum. After that I insisted, much against his wish, in superintending his culinary operations, with the result that we got good palatable food at about one-half the cost.

My best servant, or at all events the one I liked best, was a young girl of about fourteen or fifteen, who acted in our dramas, and was my personal attendant between whiles. She was a really nice little lassie, with no nonsense about her, and an excellent taste as regards the most suitable native attire for me to wear in our various plays, and the best way to drape and arrange it. She, too, was a bit of a philosopher in her way, some of her remarks being exceedingly quaint, and yet sensible.

Once, for instance, when I was attired in evening dress for a certain social function I was attending, she started admiring my costume, and on the spur of the moment I said to her: "How would you like to wear clothes such as I am wearing?" Quick as a flash came the answer: "Ma'am, what one can never own, one must not permit one's self to like." There is a world of meaning in that little sentence—especially for our sex—if one stops to weigh it carefully. Nor does it necessarily apply only to dress, but to—well, other things.

Another use I made of my enforced leisure at this time was to learn to cycle, this being by far the easiest way of getting about in southern Togo, where the roads are fairly good. I had several spills, for it must not be imagined that the Togoland roads, good though they are judged by African standards, are in any way comparable with the macadamised highways one cycles over at home. Still, I persevered, and after a while I became a fairly proficient rider.

One advantage I had, and that was not being hampered in any way as regards dress. One returns to nature in equatorial Africa. No tight skirts, but riding-breeches, in which one can move about easily. No high heels or wafer soles, but good strong boots that are alike serviceable and comfortable. No waved hair, because the waves would not remain in for even half an hour in this hot, damp atmosphere.

Of course we were all the while on the look-out for suitable subjects and settings for our pictures. I rigged up a studio out of half a hut, and we filmed many scenes of native life and customs. Amongst other pictures we took was one showing the daily life and work of a native woman, as set forth above. This was entirely my own idea, and when the films came to be developed, and shown in London later on, this one attracted a very great deal of attention indeed.

I found, however, that the native women and girls made far worse subjects for the camera, taking them altogether, than did the men. It was more difficult to get them to pose, or rather, to be strictly accurate, they were always posing whenever the camera started clicking, instead of going about their natural avocations in the ordinary way, which was what I wanted them to do. Their silly giggling, too, used to get on my nerves, and at times made me quite angry.

There were other difficulties also as regards the mechanical part of the business. Occasionally the heat was so great that it almost sufficed to melt the films, or even to set fire to them; and they had to be kept stored, therefore, in a special sort of cooling case, built on the principal of the vacuum flask. Later on, when marching in the far north through the Togoland Sudan, the cases containing the films had themselves to be protected from the heat by being swathed in green banana leaves.

On October 10th I saw wild monkeys for the first time. Near my hut is a mealie field, and they came there at noon every day to eat their dinners. They are queer little creatures, very cunning and amusing, but very shy, so that it is difficult to get near them and study their antics.

Once or twice I went to a native dance, but I must confess that I was not greatly impressed. It amused me for ten minutes or so, but as the movements are always the same I soon grew tired of watching them. And the noise of the native drums is simply deafening, so much so that it generally brought on a more or less severe attack of headache.

On the night of October the 15th I had quite a little adventure. It was bright moonlight; I could not sleep, and at eleven o'clock, when the whole place was hushed in slumber, I was seized with the desire to climb to the top of one of the great steel towers that have been erected here by Baron Codelli von Fahnenfeld in connection with the Government wireless telegraphy station, mention of which has been made in a previous chapter.

There are no fewer than nine of these towers, varying in height from about 250 feet, up to about 400 feet, and with an enterprise born of ignorance and inexperience I chose the tallest of them all for my experiment. I thought how beautiful the African landscape would look seen from the top under the light of the tropical moon, and started on my long climb full of hope and enthusiasm. By the time I had reached about a third of the way up, however, all my ambition had evaporated, and I was glad to go slowly back again. I found the climb down even more nerve-trying than the climb up—for one thing the stimulus had departed—and I reached the ground in a state bordering on collapse.

CHAPTER IV
STARTING "ON TREK"

The first few days of November were spent in packing up our belongings and making ready to start up-country away from the rail-head, and into "the back of beyond," as Schomburgk put it.

The packing process interested me greatly; partly, I suppose, because it gave my housewifely instincts full play. It was like making preparations for a glorified picnic on a gigantic scale. Piles of provender, pyramids of stores of all kinds, cumbered the camp, and it fell to my lot to bring order out of chaos.

Necessaries and provisions for a five months' trip had to be packed, and all the "chop boxes," as they are called out there, had to be carefully marked and their contents scheduled. It was also necessary to see that each box weighed precisely 60 lb., neither more nor less, this being what each porter contracts to carry in Togo.

This was my work, and the motto given me for my guidance was "in every box a little of everything." This obviated the bother of opening a separate box for each article wanted on the march, one or two days' supplies being carried in each box, and used as required, after which the empty box could be discarded, and another one opened.

The most important single article amongst the host of stores was the quinine. Over and over again I was urged to look carefully after this. One can do without food in the bush, I was told; one can even do, for a while at all events, without water; but to be without quinine spells death.

Everybody takes it regularly out there, and quite as a matter of course, the usual dose being thirty-five grains or thereabouts each week. I took my little lot in two separate doses on Saturday and Sunday, and I don't mind confessing that, in the words of the popular ditty of the day, "I didn't want to do it." Only I had to. There was no escape. Schomburgk and Hodgson, our operator, who were the only other white people in the party at this stage of the journey, took theirs on the instalment principle, five grains each evening. But I preferred the other way.

At last everything was ready. Our one hundred carriers, collected and sorted with elaborate care from a dozen or more different villages, made a brave show. Altogether, with our personal staff, interpreters, and so forth, we had a retinue of exactly 120 followers; a greater, I reflected, than any I was ever likely to travel with in future, and certainly far in excess of any that I had been honoured with in the past.

On the evening of the 4th of November we entertained to dinner the good Fathers of the Catholic Mission from Atakpame, who had shown us many kindly courtesies during the time we had spent in their neighbourhood, and on the 5th we said good-bye to Kamina, and started on our journey.

Our object was to film scenes and plays of native life amongst absolutely virgin and unspoiled surroundings, and to this end we intended to penetrate to the extremest northern confines of Togo, as far at least as the borders of the French Sudan. As I have already intimated, no white woman had ever travelled so far afield in this part of Africa before, but we anticipated little difficulty or danger on this account, the natives being reported as quite friendly everywhere along our proposed line of route. Then, too, His Highness the Duke of Mecklenburg, the governor of the colony, had very kindly instructed all district commissioners and other Government officials to render the expedition every assistance in their power; so that altogether we looked forward to a pleasant, if possibly a somewhat strenuous trip.

The first stage of our journey was to a place called Sokode, seven days' march, and up to this point there is a very fair road. Consequently we had arranged to cycle so far, the major explaining that we should have all the horseback riding we wanted later on.

Our first day's trek was to have been a very short one, only seven miles, and so we did not start until four o'clock in the afternoon, having sent on our carriers and instructed them where to wait for us. But once again we had experience of the curious perversity of the African native. Instead of covering a short seven-mile stage, as ordered, they travelled a good fifteen before they condescended to call a halt.

As a result darkness overtook us long before we overtook them, and I had one or two rather nasty spills, reaching camp at last sore, shaken, and bruised. Schomburgk was furious, but was obliged to dissemble a good deal, as at this stage of the journey, with the carriers comparatively close to their homes, any undue show of harshness or temper might easily have resulted in stampeding the whole lot of them.

That night I spent on a camp bed in an old deserted straw hut. It was not altogether uncomfortable, but I got little sleep. The carriers were all round me in groups of messes, each with its own little fire, and they were all the time mumbling and talking to one another.

The next day we made a short march, as the rest-house was only about eight miles ahead. These rest-houses are strung out all along the Kamina-Sokode road at distances about twenty miles apart, and each marks the end of a stage. Our operator, Hodgson, should have picked us up here. He had left Kamina the day after our departure, intending to overtake us, but he passed us somehow, and cycled on to the next rest-house.

Naturally we wondered what on earth had become of him, and were beginning to get rather anxious when, about four o'clock in the afternoon, a messenger arrived with news of his whereabouts, and bearing a letter asking urgently for a supply of provisions to be sent on to him, as he had nothing to eat where he was, and had tasted no food all that day.

By degrees things began to settle down. I had charge of the commissariat and cooking arrangements. The natives I found tractable enough, but woefully deficient in their notions of cleanliness. Most of them entertained the idea that the proper way to wash a plate or a dish was to lick it all over thoroughly. In this way, they explained, they not only cleansed it, but at the same time were able to get at least a taste of the white man's "chop."

Water, they contended, was for drinking, not for washing things in. Even to rub over a kitchen utensil with a wisp of dried grass seemed to them a work of supererogation. Eventually I used to boil the water myself in which the dishes were washed up—a necessary precaution against dysentery—and superintend the washing-up operations from start to finish. It was, I found, the only way.

I also had charge of the petty cash book, and used to make small advances to the boys as occasion demanded. They had christened me "The Puss," and applications for money became more frequent and insistent than Schomburgk deemed consistent with good order and discipline. It was, "Please, Puss, give me some pennies," "Me want one shilling, please. Puss," and so on from morning till night.

The climax came on the evening of the second day, when we were about twenty-five miles out from Kamina. Just as I was retiring for the night, a letter was handed to me which purported to come from Messa, our cook, and Alfred, our chief interpreter, but which was really, I found out afterwards, inspired by the first-named individual, although drawn up and signed by them both.

"Dear Puss," it ran, "cook and myself want advance. One pound please. Or more. If not more, less would be good. Farther up in the bush presently we no want one penny. This the last. So please not tell master, because perhaps he make palaver. Good evening, dear Puss. We salute you. Alfred and Messa."

Well, I made a bit of a palaver myself about it, for a sovereign seemed a good round sum for a couple of natives to want all of a hurry, but eventually, yielding to their urgent entreaties, I let them have it. We broke camp next morning at three o'clock, so as to avoid marching in the heat of the day. To my amazement and disgust the cook had disappeared. So, too, had one of our bicycles. The chief interpreter, on being interrogated, disclaimed all knowledge of the whereabouts of the absent man. He had, he asserted, merely written the letter to oblige Messa, and had no idea that he intended deserting, as he apparently had done.

Here was a pretty go and no mistake. The major swore fluently; I cried—profusely. Then we both got angry. He said it was all my fault. "The idea of giving a nigger a whole sovereign advance!" I retorted that he ought to have impressed upon me more carefully what mean, underhand skunks niggers were.

Gloomily we marched to the next camp, and I could hear Schomburgk grumbling to himself at intervals whenever I got near enough to him, which was not often. "No cook! Whatever shall we do? And Messa was a good cook. A better one I never had. And good cooks cannot be picked up in the bush like paw-paws." And so on, and so on.

We marched eighteen miles that morning, the longest stage we had done so far, then halted for breakfast.

"Sardines and crackers!" sneered Schomburgk.

"For gracious sake go away somewhere for half an hour," I retorted hotly. "I'm going to run this chop."

He picked up his gun, and strolled off into the bush—grumbling. I set to work to prepare breakfast. It was hard work to bring my self-imposed task to a successful issue, for I had only the most rudimentary cooking utensils, and an open fire.

By dint of much labour and perseverance, however, I managed in the end to prepare a very decent dish of eggs and bacon, with hot rolls, and strong steaming coffee. Schomburgk grunted approval when he came to partake of it, and afterwards was quite genial, despite the affair of the missing Messa. "Feed the brute!" I forget the name of the tactful woman who first gave our sex that very excellent piece of advice, but she knew what she was talking about. She had studied men, and to some purpose.

An hour later our truant cook turned up. He explained that just prior to starting on trek with us he had married a young wife, and having regard to her attractiveness and inexperience he had, on mature reflection, deemed it inadvisable to leave her behind. He had therefore gone back to fetch her, borrowing the bicycle and the sovereign for that purpose.

By dint of cross-examination I elicited that he had not left our previous camp until midnight. He had therefore cycled twenty-five miles to Kamina, and the same distance back again, plus the eighteen miles we had marched that morning, or nearly seventy miles in all in rather less than nine hours, a wonderful performance for a native, and on a native road.

I asked him about his wife. "Oh," he replied, "she come presently. She walking."

Sure enough she turned up that afternoon, having trudged the whole distance from Kamina, forty-three miles. When I saw her I did not blame Messa for not caring to leave her behind. She was as pretty a girl, for a native, as I ever wish to see. Fourteen or fifteen years old, probably, but quite fully developed and beautifully proportioned, with a pair of roguish alluring eyes, and a face all smiles. She accompanied us throughout the trip, and proved herself quite an acquisition.

As for Messa, we ought of course to have chided him severely. But, as a matter of fact, we were so exceedingly glad to get him back again that but little was said to him at the time. Later on, however, he was taken pretty sternly to task, and warned that any similar breach of discipline would in future be very seriously dealt with.

CHAPTER V
ATAKPAME TO SOKODE

I forgot to say that shortly after leaving Kamina, at a village called Anâ, we were overtaken by another caravan convoying a European, a certain Dr. Berger, who was travelling up-country as far as Sokode, with a view to vaccinating the natives there.

The meeting came about in this wise. On arriving at Anâ, we discovered that the rest-house there was already occupied by a Mr. Lange, an engineer, who was building a bridge across the Anâ river.

He was away at work when we got there, and Schomburgk sent his (Lange's) boy to tell him of our arrival. Presently Lange turned up, looking rather perplexed, and not a little worried. The statement made to him by his boy, it appeared, had been couched in the following terms: "Master, two white men have arrived, and one of them looks like a woman."

Lange had guessed from this the identity of our party, for he had known Schomburgk during his previous trip, and had heard of his re-arrival in the colony, and of my presence there with him. His worried appearance, we found out, was due to the fact that he had practically run out of provisions just then, and so was unable to show us the hospitality he would have desired; and he was greatly relieved when we asked him to be our guest during our stay at Anâ. I may add that this was Schomburgk's invariable practice, and I have often heard him inveigh against the thoughtlessness sometimes shown by a certain type of globe-trotting European travellers in Africa in planting themselves upon other Europeans, sometimes for days together, and eating up food which is perhaps badly needed, and may be very difficult to replace. Of course hospitality under such circumstances is never refused. It is the unwritten law of the bush that white man shares with white man. But all the same there are times when it works hardly on the individual who does the sharing.

Well, luncheon was served and eaten, and we were enjoying our coffee and cigarettes, when a new lot of carriers hove in sight.

"Hullo!" remarked Lange to Schomburgk, "this looks like a white man's caravan"; and the two fell to discussing the foolishness of the individual, whoever he might be, in travelling thus during the heat of the day.

Presently the owner of the caravan, the Dr. Berger mentioned above, turned up, looking very hot and tired. Of course we made him welcome—it is wonderful how bush life makes one relish the advent of a white stranger—and we spent a very pleasant time together during the rest of the day.

He was the most even-tempered man as regards his dealings with the natives that I have ever come across. Nothing that they did or said seemed to disturb him in the least.

Curiously enough, although he was a Government official, he was travelling unprovided with an interpreter; and he himself, of course, understood no word of any of the native dialects.

When he wanted anything he simply asked his boy for it, addressing him at considerable length and with much circumlocution in German. Now this boy, whose name by the way was Joa, had been specially engaged by the worthy doctor because he had represented himself to be a fluent German scholar.

As a matter of fact, beyond a few phrases that he had learned to repeat parrot-like, he knew nothing whatever of the language, and the result of their joint efforts to make themselves understood was laughable in the extreme, and was not rendered the less amusing owing to the fact that the doctor would not allow our interpreter to intervene to straighten out the verbal tangle. He wanted, he said, to train his boy to understand German sufficiently well to minister to his wants.

As a result we nearly laughed ourselves into fits over scenes like the following, repeated at intervals, and with variations, all through the day.

"Joa," the doctor would say, "my friends would like a whisky and soda, and I myself could do with a drop. A small modicum of alcohol, Joa, after the day's march, certainly does no harm to a white man, and may conceivably do him good. Therefore, Joa, you may bring us a syphon of soda, please, together with a bottle of whisky"; and the doctor would imitate in dumb show the process of drawing a cork out of a bottle.

"Yah!" Joa would say, his face all one broad grin; and off he would go to his master's tent, to return presently with—a telescope.

"Now, Joa," the doctor would remark genially, "a telescope is a very good thing in its way, but one cannot drink telescopes, Joa. What we now want, Joa, is a whisky and soda, especially the soda." And he would start to imitate the pressing down of the lever of a soda-water syphon.

A new light would then break on Joa's face. "Ah! Yah!" he would cry, and trot off again, to reappear a minute or so later carrying with due care and circumspection his master's double-barrelled rifle, loaded, and at full-cock.

And so the pantomime would proceed, master and man both in the best of tempers, until at last, perhaps at the fourth or fifth attempt, perchance at the tenth or twelfth, the native would hit upon the right article, either by accident, or by the slower process of elimination.

Whereupon the doctor would smile gravely yet pleasantly at us, as if in mild reproof of our unseemly mirth, and remark: "There you are; with time and patience one can achieve anything, even in Africa and with African natives."

On the morning after this little episode we rose at three o'clock in order to cover the next stage, as far as a place called Njamassila, before the worst heat of the day began. This, I may say, was our usual practice henceforward; as it is, indeed, that of all old seasoned travellers in this part of the world.

The distance from Anâ to Njamassila is roughly about twenty miles, and the road in places is not particularly smooth. It was too, of course, quite dark when we started, so that altogether I was not particularly sorry when Schomburgk decreed that I was to do the first part of the journey in my hammock.

In this way I was carried about two-thirds of the stage. Then, when it got light, I climbed out, mounted my bicycle, and rode the remainder of the distance. It was rough going, and very cold at first, but I persevered, rather reproaching myself for my earlier laziness. When, however, I discovered on arriving at Njamassila that our doctor friend had elected to be carried the whole of the way, I went to the other extreme, shook hands with myself, metaphorically speaking, and plumed myself mightily on my "wonderful" exhibition of hardihood and endurance. "I intend to cycle the whole of the next stage," I told Schomburgk.

Alas, my pride in this respect, and on this occasion, was of the kind that goes before a fall. Whether or no it was due to my unwonted exertions of the previous day—I had done a lot of running about on foot besides the cycling—I cannot say, but the fact remains that when we struck camp at 2.30 next morning I felt so weak and dizzy, as well as stiff and sore, that I could hardly stand.

Under the circumstances there was nothing to do but to seek refuge in my hammock once more, where, snuggled beneath many rugs and wraps designed to keep out the cold night air, and lulled by the rhythmic swaying of the conveyance, I promptly fell sound asleep.

It seemed to me that I had hardly closed my eyes more than a very few minutes, when I was awakened by hearing Schomburgk angrily inquiring of the hammock boys why they were standing idle, and whereabouts was I. "Master," they replied, "she is inside asleep, and we feared you would be angry did we wake her."

All this I heard dimly as in a dream between sleeping and waking. Lazily I lay back, too comfortable even to raise myself on my elbow and peer out; but I was beginning to wonder what was the reason for the long delay, and how soon we were going to resume our journey, when the sound of Schomburgk's voice, once more raised in protest, roused me into instant and complete wakefulness.

It was me he addressed this time, and his words were as follows:

"Come, little lady; are you not going to get up?"

"But why should I get up?" I replied. "What time is it? Where are we?"

"It's eight o'clock," he answered, "and we are at Agbandi."

"What!" I screamed; and, pulling the curtains aside, I bounced out on to the ground.

What I saw made me rub my eyes with amazement. Before me was a new rest-house, and a village that I had never seen before, and preparations for breakfast were, I could see, well under way. Only then did I realise that I had slept right through the entire twenty-mile stage from Njamassila to Agbandi.