(I
Exhausted My Vocabulary On Those Boys Yesterday.)
As soon as we saw what we were in for, we had thrown dry wood on to
the fire, and it blazed just as the rain came down, so with our
assistance it fought a good fight with its fellow elements, spitting
and hissing like a wild cat.
It could have managed the water fairly
well, but the wind came, very nearly putting an end to it by
carrying away its protecting bough house, which settled on
"Professor" Kefalla, who burst out in a lecture on the foolishness
of mountaineering and the quantity of devils in this region. Just
in the midst of these joys another boy came through the bush with
another demijohn of water. We did not receive him even civilly; I
burst out laughing, and the boys went off in a roar, and we shouted
at him, "Where them chop?" "He live for come," said the boy, and we
then gave him a hearty welcome and a tot of rum, and an hour
afterwards two more boys appear, one carrying a sack of rice and
beef for the men, and the other a box for me from Herr Liebert,
containing a luxurious supply of biscuits, candles, tinned meats,
and a bottle of wine and one of beer.
We are now all happy, though exceeding damp, and the boys sit round
the fire, with their big iron pot full of beef and rice, busy
cooking while they talk. Wonderful accounts of our prodigies of
valour I hear given by Xenia, and terrible accounts of what they
have lived through from the others, and the men who have brought up
the demijohns and the chop recount the last news from Buea.
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