Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/674

 the relative value of white and blue kokos as food-supply for labourers, and one of them talked a little wildly, for him, at moments. But there was no headlong dash for water, surrounded in blue flames of bad language, such as I am accustomed to when a lord of creation gets drivers on him, and I proudly thought that to me alone belonged the glory of quietly living down driver ants, but I subsequently learnt that England had to share this honour in the field of colonial enterprise with Germany; and so, as Mr. Pepys would say, home to Victoria, in the lovely late afternoon. There was just a doubt, however, for half-an-hour or so, whether we should succeed in rounding the rocky promontory that separates Ambas from Man-o'-War Bay, for the sea had got rough in the mysterious way seas do down here, without any weather reason, and the wind, what there was of it, was dead against us. But although my dress was nearly reduced to the dead level of my other dresses, the thing was done.

The next few days I spent expecting the Nachtigal. Of course I had unpacked all my things again and most of them were at the wash, when Idabea rushes into my room saying, "Nachtigal kommt," and I packed furiously, and stood by to go aboard, having been well educated by my chief tutor, Captain Murray, on the iniquity of detaining the ship. I hasten to say the lesson on this point I never brought down on myself. I have never robbed a church or committed a murder, so should never dream of plunging into this lower-most depth of crime without a preparatory course of capital offences. When, however, I was packed, I found that it was not the Nachtigal which had come in, but the Hyæna—the guard-ship of Cameroons River—out for an airing, and as her commander Captain Baham, kindly asked me on board to lunch, I had to unpack again. At lunch I had the honour of meeting the two officers who had first ascended the peak of Cameroon from the south-east face, and I learnt from them many things which would have been of great help to me had I had this honour before I went up, but which were none the less good to know; and during the whole of their stay in Ambas Bay I received from the Hyæna an immense amount of pleasure, courtesy, and kindness, adding to the already great