Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/111

 minutes we were playing bob cherry again with Lagos Bar sharks, going down into his boat by the Eko's rope-ladder.

Were I but Khalif of Bagdad, I would have that captain's name—which is Heldt—written in letters of gold on ivory tablets with a full and particular account of all he did for us. No sooner did he successfully get us on board his comfortable vessel, than he gave me his own cabin on the upper deck and stowed himself in some sort of outhouse alongside it, which I observed, when going out on deck during the night to see if that Benguella had come in to the roads, was far too short for him. He gave us dinner with great promptitude—an excellent dinner commencing with what I thought was a plateful of hot jam, but which anyhow was nice. Indeed so reconciled did I become to my environment that my interest in the coming of the Benguella hourly waned, and had it not been for my having caught a sense of worry about "the way coals were being wasted" on the Government boat inside the bar, I should have forgotten the South-Wester. Not so my companion. You cannot distract a man from the higher duties and responsibilities of life so easily. His mind was a prey to the most dismal thoughts and conjectures. He regretted having come out on the Eko, although his motive to see how she would get across the bar at low water was a noble one and arose from the nature of his particular appointment, and not only did he regret that, but remembered, with remorse, all the other things he had done which he should not have done. Captain Heldt did his best to cheer him and distract him from the contemplation of these things and the way coal was being wasted on his account inside the bar. The captain offered him suits of his own clothes to change his sopped ones for; but no, he said he was lost enough already without getting into clothes of that size. Lager beer, cigars, and stories were then tried on him, but with little effect. He took a certain amount of interest in the captain's account of how he had had his back severely injured and had had to navigate his vessel among the shoals of Saint Ann while lying in great agony for weeks owing to an accident in the Grain Coast surf, and also in the various accounts of the many ribs the captain had had broken in various ways on the high seas, but any