I will draw a veil over the scene, particularly over
my observations to those men. They did not attempt
to deny their desertion, but they attempted to explain
it, each one saying that it was not he but the other
boy who “got fright too much.”
I closed the palaver promptly with a brief but lurid
sketch of my opinion on the situation, and ordered
food, for not having had a thing save that cup of
sour claret since 6.30 A.M., and it being now 11 P.M.,
I felt sinkings. Then arose another beautiful
situation before me. It seems when Cook and
Monrovia got back into camp this morning Master Cook
was seized with one of those attacks of a desire to
manage things that produce such awful results in the
African servant, and sent all the beef and rice down
to Buea to be cooked, because there was no water here
to cook it. Therefore the men have got nothing
to eat. I had a few tins of my own food and so
gave them some, and they became as happy as kings
in a few minutes, listening and shouting over the
terrible adventures of Xenia, who is posing as the
Hero of the Great Cameroon. I get some soda-water
from the two bottles left and some tinned herring,
and then write out two notes to Herr Liebert asking
him to send me three more demijohns of water, and
some beef and rice from the store, promising faithfully
to pay for them on my return.
I would not prevent those men of mine from going up
that peak above me after their touching conduct to-day.
Oh! no; not for worlds, dear things.
CHAPTER XIX. THE GREAT PEAK OF CAMEROONS—(continued).
Setting forth how the Voyager for a second time reaches
the S.E. crater, with some account of the pleasures
incidental to camping out in the said crater.
September 24th.—Lovely morning, the grey-white
mist in the forest makes it like a dream of Fairyland,
each moss-grown tree stem heavily gemmed with dewdrops.
At 5.30 I stir the boys, for Sasu, the sergeant,
says he must go back to his military duties.
The men think we are all going back with him as he
is our only guide, but I send three of them down with
orders to go back to Victoria—two being
of the original set I started with. They are
surprised and disgusted at being sent home, but they
have got “hot foot,” and something wrong
in the usual seat of African internal disturbances,
their “tummicks,” and I am not thinking
of starting a sanatorium for abdominally-afflicted
Africans in that crater plain above. Black boy
is the other boy returned, I do not want another of
his attacks.
They go, and this leaves me in the forest camp with
Kefalla, Xenia, and Cook, and we start expecting the
water sent for by Monrovia boy yesterday forenoon.
There are an abominable lot of bees about; they do
not give one a moment’s peace, getting beneath
the waterproof sheets over the bed. The ground,
bestrewn with leaves and dried wood, is a mass of
large flies rather like our common house-fly, but
