After These Appalling Objects
The Souls Of My Krumen Hungered With A Great Desire.
"NO," said I,
in my severest tone, and after buying other things, we passed on.
Imagine my horror, therefore, hours afterwards and miles away, to
find my precious crew had got a red parasol apiece.
Previous
experience quite justified me in thinking that these had been
stolen; and I pictured to myself my Portuguese friends, whose
territory I was then in, commenting upon the incident, and reviling
me as another instance of how the brutal English go looting through
the land. I found, however, I was wrong, for the parasols had been
"dashed" my rapacious rascals "for top," and the last one connected
with the affair who deserved pity was the trader from whom I had
believed them stolen. It was I, not he, who suffered, for it was
the wet season in West Africa and those red parasols ran. To this
day my scientific soul has never been able to account for the vast
body of crimson dye those miserable cotton things poured out,
plentifully drenching myself and their owners, the Kruboys, and
everything we associated with that day. I am quite prepared to hear
that some subsequent wanderer has found a red trail in Africa itself
like that one so often sees upon the maps. When they do, I hereby
claim that real red trail as mine.
I confess I like the African on the whole, a thing I never expected
to do when I went to the Coast with the idea that he was a degraded,
savage, cruel brute; but that is a trifling error you soon get rid
of when you know him. The Kruboy is decidedly the most likeable of
all Africans that I know. Wherein his charm lies is difficult to
describe, and you certainly want the patience of Job, and a
conscience made of stretching leather to deal with the Kruboy in the
African climate, and live. In his better manifestations he reminds
me of that charming personality, the Irish peasant, for though he
lacks the sparkle, he is full of humour, and is the laziest and the
most industrious of mankind. He lies and tells the truth in such a
hopelessly uncertain manner that you cannot rely on him for either.
He is ungrateful and faithful to the death, honest and thievish, all
in one and the same specimen of him.
Ingratitude is a crime laid very frequently to the score of all
Africans, but I think unfairly; certainly I have never had to
complain of it, and the Krumen often show gratitude for good
treatment in a grand way. The way those Kruboys of gallant Captain
Lane helped him work Lagos Bar and save lives by the dozen from the
stranded ships on it and hauled their "Massa" out from among the
sharkey foam every time he went into it, on the lifeboat upsetting,
would have done credit to Deal or Norfolk lifeboat men, but the
secret of their devotion is their personal attachment.
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