The Rain Comes Down With Extra Virulence As Soon As We Set To Work
To Start The Fire And Open The Loads.
I and Peter have great times
getting out the military camp-bed from its tight, bolster-like case,
while
Kefalla gives advice, until, being irritated by the bed's
behaviour, I blow up Kefalla and send him to chop firewood.
However, we get the thing out and put up after cutting a place clear
to set it on; owing to the world being on a stiff slant hereabouts,
it takes time to make it stand straight. I get four stakes cut, and
drive them in at the four corners of the bed, and then stretch over
it Herr von Lucke's waterproof ground-sheet, guy the ends out to
pegs with string, feel profoundly grateful to both Herr Liebert for
the bed and Herr von Lucke for the sheet, and place the baggage
under the protection of the German Government's two belongings.
Then I find the boys have not got a fire with all their fuss, and I
have to demonstrate to them the lessons I have learnt among the Fans
regarding fire-making. We build a fire-house and then all goes
well. I notice they do not make a fire Fan fashion, but build it in
a circle.
Evidently one of the labourers from Buea, named Xenia, is a good
man. Equally evidently some of my other men are only fit to carry
sandwich-boards for Day and Martin's blacking. I dine luxuriously
off tinned fat pork and hot tea, and then feeling still hungry go on
to tinned herring. Excellent thing tinned herring, but I have to
hurry because I know I must go up through the edge of the forest on
to the grass land, and see how the country is made during the brief
period of clearness that almost always comes just before nightfall.
So leaving my boys comfortably seated round the fire having their
evening chop, I pass up through the heavily lichen-tasselled fringe
of the forest-belt into deep jungle grass, and up a steep and
slippery mound.
In front the mountain-face rises like a wall from behind a set of
hillocks, similar to the one I am at present on. The face of the
wall to the right and left has two dark clefts in it. The peak
itself is not visible from where I am; it rises behind and beyond
the wall. I stay taking compass bearings and look for an easy way
up for to-morrow. My men, by now, have missed their "ma" and are
yelling for her dismally, and the night comes down with great
rapidity for we are in the shadow of the great mountain mass, so I
go back into camp. Alas! how vain are often our most energetic
efforts to remove our fellow creatures from temptation. I knew a
Sunday down among the soldiers would be bad for my men, and so came
up here, and now, if you please, these men have been at the rum,
because Bum, the head man, has been too done up to do anything but
lie in his blanket and feed.
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