Our camp hole was pretty easily distinguishable by daylight, for it
was on the left-hand side of one of the forest tongues, the grass
land running down like a lane between two tongues here, and just
over the entrance three conspicuously high trees showed. But we
could not see these "picking-up" points in the darkness, so I had to
keep getting Xenia to strike matches, and hold them in his hat while
I looked at the compass. Presently we came full tilt up against a
belt of trees which I knew from these compass observations was our
tongue of forest belt, and I fired a couple of revolver shots into
it, whereabouts I judged our camp to be.
This was instantly answered by a yell from human voices in chorus,
and towards that yell in a slightly amiable - a very slightly
amiable - state of mind I went.
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
both butterflies and beetles seem scarce; and I confess I do not
feel up to hunting much after yesterday's work, and deem it
advisable to rest. My face and particularly my lips are a misery to
me, having been blistered all over by yesterday's sun, and last
night I inadvertently whipped the skin all off one cheek with the
blanket, and it keeps on bleeding, and, horror of horrors, there is
no tea until that water comes. I wish I had got the mountaineering
spirit, for then I could say, "I'll never come to this sort of place
again, for you can get all you want in the Alps." I have been told
this by my mountaineering friends - I have never been there - and that
you can go and do all sorts of stupendous things all day, and come
back in the evening to table d'hote at an hotel; but as I have not
got the mountaineering spirit, I suppose I shall come fooling into
some such place as this as soon as I get the next chance.
About 8.30, to our delight, the gallant Monrovia boy comes through
the bush with a demijohn of water, and I get my tea, and give the
men the only half-pound of rice I have and a tin of meat, and they
eat, become merry, and chat over their absent companions in a
scornful, scandalous way. Who cares for hotels now? When one is in
a delightful place like this, one must work, so off I go to the
north into the forest, after giving the rest of the demijohn of
water into the Monrovia boy's charge with strict orders it is not to
be opened till my return.
