the kindness of sekondi—swanzy's to the rescue—a journey to dixcove—with a nursing sister—the rainy season and wet feet—engineering a steep hill in the dark—rains and brilliant fireflies—the p.w.d. man's taste in colours—the need of a woman in west africa—crossing the whin river—my fresh-air theory confirmed.
sekondi, from the nursing sister outwards, was as it always has been, awfully good to me, and i felt as if i were come home. i had the kindest offers of help from all sides, and the railway company took my damaged goods in hand and did their level best to repair damages. i was bound for the goldfields and ashanti, but i had still uneasily in my remembrance that little bit of coast to the west of sekondi that i had left unvisited. if i had not written so much already about the carrier difficulties, i might really write a book, that to me would be quite interesting, about that day's journey to dixcove. swanzy's transport came to the rescue and provided me with carriers, a most kindly gift, for which i am for ever grateful, and i took with me a young nursing sister who was anxious to see something of bush travel.
there is always a fascination about the shore, the palm trees and the yellow sand and the blue sky and bluer sea, but now the difficulties were being added to daily and hourly, because it was the beginning of the rainy season, and all the little rivers had “broken out,” and to cross from one bank to another when a river is flooded, even if it is only a little one, is as a rule no easy matter. to my great amusement i found my companion had a great objection to getting her feet wet. i am afraid i laughed most unsympathetically.
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“you can't,” i decided, and i fear she thought me a brute, “travel in the rainy season in africa and hope to keep dry”; and i exhorted her not to mind if the water were up to her ankles, but to wade through. she brought home to me difficulties of travel that i had never thought of before. it had never occurred to me to worry as to whether i was likely to get wet before; a little water or a little discomfort never seemed to matter. the seat of the canoe i was sitting in broke and let me down into the waist-deep puddle of water in the bottom, and somehow it seemed a less thing to me than that her feet should get wet did to her. she was a nice, good-looking girl, pleasant and smiling, but i decided that never again as long as i lived would i travel with another woman. i know my own shortcomings, but i never know where another woman will break out.
and we went along that coast, where, two hundred years ago, quaint, gossipy old bosman had found so much of beauty and interest. tacorady fort was deserted in his day. it is overgrown and forgotten now. boutry is on a high hill, the place of the old fort only marked by a thick clump of trees, dark-green against the sky line; but it was getting dark when we reached boutry, there was a river to cross, and i was obsessed with a sense of my responsibilities, such as i had never felt when i had only my own skin to look after, and i was very thankful that a doctor who was going to dixcove had overtaken us. if i damaged my travelling companion in any way, i felt that he at least could share responsibility. we crossed the river, and the darkness fell, pitchy, black darkness; it rained in a businesslike way as it does in the tropics, and there was a high hill to climb. it was a very steep hill, with a very shocking track that did duty as a road, and my companion expressed her utter inability to get up it. i was perfectly sure that our kroo hammock-boys could never get us up it, and i was inclined to despair; then that doctor came to our aid. he had four mendi boys, the best carriers on the coast, and we put them on to my companion's hammock, and gaily she went off. she knew nothing of the dangers of the way. i did, but i did not feel it necessary to enlighten her. i don't know what the doctor did, but i put on my burberry and instructed two of my carriers that they must help me over the road. it was a road. when i came back over it in the light, three days later, i wondered how on earth we had tackled it in the dark; still more did i wonder how a heavily laden hammock—for she was a strapping young woman, a good deal bigger than i am—had been engineered up and down it. but mendi carriers are wonderful, and there was a certain charm in walking there in the night. when the rain stopped, the fireflies came out, and the gloom beneath the trees was lightened by thousands of brilliant sparks of fire. i don't know whether fireflies are more brilliant after rain, but i remember them most distinctly on those two wet nights when i was travelling, once on my way to dixcove and once on the way to palime.
up the hill we went and down the hill, along the sands, across the shallows of a river just breaking out—and the lantern light gleamed wetly on the sand—through little sleepy villages and across more hilly country, and at last, just as the moon was rising stormily in the clouded sky, we were opposite a long flight of wide steps, and knew we had reached dixcove.
there was one white man, a p.w.d. man, in dixcove, and a surprised man was he. actually, two women had come out of the night and flung themselves upon him. of course, we had brought servants and provisions and beds, so it was only a question of providing quarters. now i smile when i think of it. we crossed the courtyard, we climbed the stairs, we entered the modern house that was built on top of the little fort, and out of a sort of whirlpool a modified disorder emerged, when we found ourselves, two men and two women, by the light of a fluttering, chimneyless hinkson lamp, all assembled in the room that two camp-beds proclaimed the women's bedroom, and we all partook of a little whisky to warm ourselves while we waited for dinner. the p.w.d. man was fluttered and, i think, pleased, for at least our coming broke the monotony, and the nursing sister undertook the commissariat and interviewed his cook. altogether we made a cheerful little week-end party in that romote corner of the earth, and when it rained, as rain it did most of the time, we played bridge as if we had been in london.
dixcove is a pretty little place, literally a cove, and the fort is built on high ground on a neck of land that forms the head of the cove. round it grow many orange groves, and altogether it is a desirable and delightful spot, but it must be very lonely for the only white man who was there. he had just repainted the bungalow on top of the fort, and whether he had used up the odds and ends of paints, or whether this was his taste, or whether he had desired something to cheer him, or whether he was actuated by the same spirit that seems to move impressionist painters, i do not know, but when i got up next morning and walked on the bastion, that bungalow fairly took my breath away. it was painted whole-heartedly a violent reckitt's blue; the uprights and the other posts that criss-crossed across it were a bright vivid green, and they were all picked out in pink. there was the little white fort set in the midst of tropical greenery, everything beautiful, with the bungalow on top setting the discordant note. it was pitiful, but at the same time the effect was so comic that the nursing sister and i laughed till we cried, and then our host came out and could not understand what we were laughing about. we came to the charitable conclusion he must be colour-blind.
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the two men wanted us to stay. they said it was more comfortable, and when i compared the luncheon the doctor gave us to the meals we had when i provided the eatables and the nursing sister gave her attention to the cuisine, i must say i agreed with them, and resolved once again to proclaim the absolute necessity for having women in west africa. but she had to go back to her work, and i had to go on my travels, and so, like the general who marched his army up the hill and marched it down again, presently i was on my way back. and not a moment too soon. it was raining when we started, and our host and the doctor pressed us to stay, but i had not been on the coast all this time without knowing very well what that rain would mean. the rivers that had been trickles when we set out would be roaring torrents now, and i knew in a little time they would be impassable; then the only thing would be to go back to sekondi by surf boat, and i had had enough of the surf to last me for many a long day. besides, our provisions were getting low. we started early; we had less to carry, for we had eaten most of the provisions, and we had more men, for we brought back most of the doctor's following, but still it took us all we knew to get across those rivers, and the whin river was nearly too much for us. it had been bad when we came, now the sea was racing across the sands, the flooded, muddy water of the river was rushing to meet it, and the two black men who were working a surf boat as a ferry came and asked an exorbitant sum to take us across. my headman demurred and said we wouldn't go. i left it to him, and the bargaining was conducted in the usual slatternly coast english at the top of their voices. i must confess, as my companion and i sat on the sand and watched the wild waters, i wondered what we would do if we did not cross, for dixcove was fully fourteen miles behind us. down came the price by slow degrees, in approved fashion, till at last it appeared i, my companion, our goods, chattels, hammocks, and our followers, numbering fully twenty men, were to be taken across for the sum of two shillings and sixpence. i sent the gear first, and then some of the men, and finally the nursing sister and i went. unfortunately there was not room in the boat for the two last men, and i could not help being amused when the ferryman came to be paid, and the men all clustered round vehemently demanding that i should do no such thing till their two companions were also brought over. not a scrap of faith had they in the ferryman keeping his word, so i had to sit down on the sand among the short, coarse grass and the long stalks of the wandering bean, and wait till those two men were fetched, when i paid up, and we went on to sekondi.
the journey was short; it is hardly worth recording, hardly worth remembering, but for those wonderful fireflies, and for another thing that bears strongly on my theory regarding health in west africa.
the nursing sister i took with me was a tall, goodlooking girl, considerably younger than i am, and she looked as if she ought to have been very much stronger. she had barely been on the coast a short three months, but she had already had one or two goes of fever, a thing i have never had, and she did not like it. she was very careful of herself, and she abominated the climate. at night i noticed she shut herself away from all chance of draughts, drawing curtains and shutting doors so as to insure herself against chill. when we started on our journey she was not well, “the climate was not agreeing with her,” and they were beginning to think she “could not stand it.” we spent a day in the open and we got somewhat wet. when night came we shared a room and she wanted to close, at least, a shutter. partly that was to have privacy and partly to keep away draughts. then i brutally put down my foot.
i considered it dangerous to be shut in in africa, and as i was engineering that expedition i thought i ought to have my way. one thing i did not insist upon, i did not have the windows open all round, but i had them wide on two sides, so that a thorough draught might blow through the room. my bed i put right in it, but i allowed her to put hers in the most sheltered part of the room she could find, and, of course, i could not prevent her wrapping her head in a blanket.
she put in those two nights in fear and trembling, i know, but she went back to sekondi in far better health than she had left it. that she acknowledged herself, but she does not like africa; the charm of it had passed her by, and i wonder very much if she will complete her term of service.
