It was another five hours’ march to Greh, by a track of appalling monotony. I tried to think of my next novel, but I was afraid to think of it for long, for then there might be nothing to think about next day. Greh, at the end of it all, proved an even more primitive village than Baplai. It was impossible for us to sleep in the huts, for their roofs were built so low that we could not stand upright, and there was no room for the poles of the mosquito-nets. So I ordered our beds to be put up in the cookhouse in the centre of the village, to Amedoo’s distress; he had never travelled before with white people outside Sierra Leone, and we lost caste by exposing ourselves to the stares of the villagers in the wall-less cookhouse.
There was one boy, the chiefs son, who could speak English, for he had been educated on the Coast and called himself Samuel Johnson, and there were strange bits and pieces of ‘civilisation’ scattered about the primitive place, which seemed to indicate that at last one was going south. In the cookhouse someone had painted little bright childlike pictures of steamships; a boy carrying an umbrella was naked except for a piece of blue cloth strung on beads over the genitals and a European schoolboy’s belt with a snake clasp which he wore halfway up his torso, between his breasts and navel; and what seemed another scrap of ‘civilisation’, for sexual inversion is rare among the blacks, a pair of naked ‘pansies’ stood side by side all day with their arms locked and their hair plaited in ringlets staring at me. Vande got drunk again with palm wine and Amah cut off the top of his finger with one of my swords chopping meat for the carriers’ meal. I felt irritated with everyone and everything; I could no longer afford to drink much whisky, for my case was nearly exhausted; I went to bed and lay awake all night because the goats came blundering in, tripping up over our boxes. I was vexed with them in a personal way, as if they could help their stupidity, their clumsiness. I would have exchanged them happily for rats; rats were almost as noisy, but I told myself that there was something purposeful in their noise; they knew what they were doing, but these goats were stupid. … I could have cried with exhaustion and anger and want of sleep.
And then, when he came in the morning to wake me, Amedoo said that Laminah was too sick to walk. He had lain awake all night in pain from his gum where the tooth had been drawn. The aspirin I had given him was useless. Now he was getting a little sleep for the first time. This was far more serious than the sickness of a carrier; I had less responsibility for a carrier; he was in his own country if not in his own tribe; but Laminah I had brought from another country, he couldn’t be simply jettisoned. But neither could I bear the thought of another day in Greh. I had promised the carriers a rest in Tapee-Ta because that was a large place with a District Commissioner where I could hope to buy fresh fruit, which we were beginning to need badly. Even limes had given out at Sakripie and we had seen no oranges for two weeks, but in that respect Tapee was to disappoint us.
I suggested to Amedoo that Laminah should stay behind for a day and we would wait for him at Tapee-Ta. But Amedoo said that he was afraid of being left. “This is Gio country,” Amedoo explained, “they chop people here.” So my cousin gave up the hammock to Laminah, who looked half dead when he was laid in it; and I wondered what my conscience would say to me if he died, if my curiosity for new experiences led to the death of someone so charming, so simple, capable of such enjoyment. I was afraid of blood poisoning, but I need not have been frightened.. I think it was cowardice Laminah was suffering from, for he recovered very quickly at Tapee.
Three hours through the forest brought us out into a rough road as wide as Oxford Street. Here was an example of what the President had told me of the road-building in the interior. Although the road was too rough for any kind of mechanical transport, it was impressive to see the enormous rampart of trees on either side from which it had been cut.
We were coming in range again of Liberian authority. I had already heard tales of the half-caste Commissioner at Tapee-Ta, and I was anxious to meet him. But I had not foreseen the extent of my good fortune. Colonel Elwood Davis, the leader of the campaign on the Kru Coast, the man responsible for the atrocities described in the British Blue Book, was at Tapee-Ta; I heard his name repeated by passing natives all along the great four-mile stretch of road. His name carried weight; his friends in admiration and his enemies in derision, I discovered later, called him “The Dictator of Grand Bassa”.
The road did not stretch as far as Tapee-Ta. After an hour we reached the end, where a gang of naked men was at work felling an enormous silvery cotton tree in the centre of the road. They had dug a trench about three feet deep and squatted in it singing and hacking at the trunk with ordinary bush cutlasses, the rhythm given them by two men with drums. Then there were several more hours of forest path before, in the hottest part of the day, when the sun was directly overhead, we came out of the forest on to a wide exposed road again. The powdered soil was quite white under the sun: it blinded the eyes, even behind smoked glasses.
Amedoo joined me: he had been talking to Majk and the other carriers, and he was uneasy about the great man at Tapee. He was a wicked man, he said, “Will he make trouble for massa?” I wasn’t at all sure that he mightn’t. The Liberians were under the impression that I was travelling only in the Western Province, and here I was, a long way to the east, in the Central Province. I had no proper papers: my Liberian visa only gave me permission to land at accredited ports.
I was a little uneasy. I hadn’t met Colonel Davis then and I think I pictured him as something rather ferocious in the manner of Emperor Christophe. I couldn’t help remembering the Blue Book phrases; the murdered children, the women in the burning huts, Nimley’s pathetic dignity, “And when I learnt that Colonel Davis had fought with Tiempoh, who are my children …” It certainly did seem to me that there might be trouble.
I was more uneasy still when we came in sight of the District Commissioner’s compound (the town of Tapee lay beyond). It was an impressive group of verandahed bungalows behind a stockade with an armed sentry at every gate, and the Liberian flag flying from a staff in the middle. Although it was time for siesta, there seemed to be a lot of movement; many things were going on. From the journalist’s point of view, I seemed to have come at a favourable moment, but from the Liberian point of view I couldn’t help feeling that I must look very like a spy (the moment was too opportune to be accidental) as I led my odd caravan round the stockade to the main gate.
THE DICTATOR OF GRAND BASSA
Black Mercenary
I FELT very dirty as I followed the sentry into the wide clean compound and rather absurd, with my stockings over my ankles, my stained shorts, my too, too British khaki sun helmet. I was very much at a disadvantage, standing beneath a verandah crowded with black gentlemen in the smartest of tropical lounge suits and uniforms. They had just finished lunch and were smoking cigars and drinking coffee: I wondered which was Colonel Davis. There was an air of subdued activity as I stood there in dirty neglect in the sun : clerks kept on delivering messages and running briskly off again, sentries saluted, and the supercilious diplomatic gentlemen leant over the verandah and studied with well-bred curiosity the dusty arrival.