Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/675

 debt in these things I owe to Cameroons—a debt which I shall never forget, although I can never repay it.

The third announcement of the Nachtigal proved true, and with my dilapidated baggage I went round in her, under the charge of Herr von Besser, into Old Calabar, where I received every hospitality from Mr. Moore and Mr. Wall, for my good friends Sir Claude and Lady MacDonald had left for England some months previously—for the last time as it turned out, for shortly after his arrival in England Sir Claude was sent as British Minister to Pekin.

When I reached Calabar I found that the Bakana, commanded by Captain Porter and having for her chief engineer Mr. Peter Campbell, vws expected to come in daily, and being a sister ship to the Batanga and so one of the finest boats in the service, I decided to wait for her, going up to say good-bye to Miss Slessor at Okÿon during the few days at my disposal.

We had a comfortable voyage up to Sierra Leone, where a gloom fell over the whole ship from the death of the purser, Mr. Crompton. It was onc of those terribly, sudden, hopeless cases of Coast fever, so common on the West Coast, where no man knows from day to day whether he or those round him will not, before a few hours are over, be in the grip of malarial fever, on his way to the grave.