“They were thirsting for his blood,” Colonel Davis said dramatically, but nothing which I saw later of the coastal Liberians lessened my doubt whether they had the vitality to assault anyone; with cane juice they would work themselves up to a height of oratory, but as for murder … He lowered his voice. “For twenty-four hours,” he said, “I never left Mr. King’s side. The mobs were going about the streets, thirsting
for blood. But they all said, littleWe cannot kill King without killing Davis.’” The Colonel flashed his gold teeth at me, deprecatingly. “Of course “
“Of course,” I said.
I approached the subject of the Kru war by way of the Colonel’s other military exploits. I felt that after the British Consul’s report he might feel shy of the subject, but I always over-estimated the Colonel’s shyness. When I expressed my admiration for the way in which he had disarmed the tribes, the Colonel took up the subject with enthusiasm. As far as I could make out the operation had turned on a cup of Ovaltine rather than on rifles or machine-guns, for he was a sweet-tempered man : butter wouldn’t have melted between the gold teeth. One tribe had sent out armed men to ambush him, but he had learnt their plans from his spies, had taken a different path and entered the town while it was quite empty except for women and old men. From the report on the Kxu war I should have expected Colonel Davis to have set fire to the town while his men raped the women: but no : he called for the oldest man, made him sit down, gave him a glass of Ovaltine (with the barest glance at the opposite verandah, where my whisky and glasses were laid out, the Colonel remarked, “I always have a glass of Ovaltine at the end of a day’s trek”), made friends with him, and had him send messages out to the warriors to return in peace. “Of course,” the Colonel said, “I made him understand that he and the other old men would have to remain as my guests until the arms were handed over …”
The character of the Colonel eluded me. Lord Cecil in the House of Lords had called him a ‘buccaneer’, but that was perhaps pardonable exaggeration. He was obviously a man of great ability; his disarming of the tribes testified to it, and that he had courage as well as brag the whole Kru story showed. I had not only his own word for it: the fact emerged even from the unfriendly report of the British Consul. He had come down into Chief Nimley’s district as the President’s special agent, under a guard of soldiers, to collect long overdue taxes. He knew well the man he had to deal with and he knew the risk he was running when he agreed to meet him at a palaver in the village. It had been agreed that neither should bring armed men, but when Davis arrived at the palaver-house with his clerk he found Nimley and his leading men sitting there fully armed. Even then, Davis thought, all would have gone well had not the Commander of the Frontier Force, Major Grant, who had taken a stroll round the village, rushed into the hut, interrupted the palaver, and cried out that Nimley had armed men concealed in the banana plantations. Davis commanded him to stay where he was, but Grant, crying out that he was responsible to the President for Davis’s safety, ran from the hut to summon his soldiers.
Davis’s later opinion was that Grant was in the pay of the Krus, for his action had the immediate effect of endangering Davis’s life. Nimley left the hut and his warriors swarmed round the Colonel. Naturally he made the most of the situation to me, as he leant there over the Tapee verandah with one eye on the drinks. (“I said to my clerk, Take the papers. They won’t harm you. Walk slowly up to the camp and stop the soldiers from coming here.’ I stood with my back to the wall and they flourished their spears in my face. My clerk said, ‘Colonel, I will not leave you. I will die here with you I said to him, There is no point in dying. Obey orderslittle “) But the facts were undisputed. He had been a prisoner and he had escaped. He said that when his clerk had gone, he left the wall and walked very slowly to the door. They made gestures of stabbing, but no one would stab first. Then an old man appeared with a great staff and beat them back and cleared a way for Davis through the village. “Afterwards Nimley killed the old man.”
His cook appeared on the verandah behind us and said that dinner was served, but the Colonel wouldn’t let me go : he had an audience for a story which had probably become rather stale on the Coast.
‘That night I was sitting on my verandah, as it might be tonight; it was ten o’clock, and there, just where the sentry is, I saw a big warrior dressed in war paint with little bells tied under his knees. He came up and said, ‘Who’s the big man around here?’ I said, 1 guess I’m the biggest man here. What do you want?’ He said, ‘Chief Nimley send me to tell you he’s coming up here at five o’clock in the morning to collect his tax moneylittle So I said, Tou tell Chief Nimley that I’ll be waiting for himlittle
“And at eleven o’clock I looked up and there was another warrior, a small man, all in war paint. He came up to the verandah and said, ‘Are you the big man here?’ littleWaal,’ I said, T guess you won’t find anyone bigger around this place. What do you want?’ He said, ‘Chief Nimley send me to tell you that at five o’clock he come to see if he’s a man or you are a man.’ So I said, Tou go back to Chief Nimley and tell him if he comes up here at five o’clock, m show him which is the manlittle
“And at midnight I looked up and there was a little piccaninny in Boy Scout uniform, but all dressed in war paint. He came up to the verandah and he said, ‘Where’s the big man?’ So I said, ‘Are you a Boy Scout?’ and he said, Tes’. I said, ‘Who’s your National Director of Boy Scouts?’ He said, ‘Colonel Elwood Davis.’ I said, ‘Where’s Colonel Davis now?’ and he said, ‘In Monrovia.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m Colonel Davis. Now what do you mean by appearing before your National Director of Boy Scouts in war paint?’ So he got kind of shy and said, ‘Chief Nimley told me to come up here.’ I said, ‘You go back to Chief Nimley and say I wouldn’t let a Boy Scout deliver a message like that.’ “
That seemed to be the end of the story. I said, “And did Chief Nimley come?”
“Oh no,” Colonel Davis said, “he just made lightning. But there were a lot of Buzie men in the camp, members of the Lightning Society, and they laid out their medicines and the lightning hit the trees on the beach and didn’t do any harm.”
He brought up the subject of the British Consul’s report himself. He said what had gone most to Ms heart in a very unfair document was the story that six children had been burnt alive. There was no one who loved children more than he did. He had piccaninnies of his own, and I had only to ask his wife, his second wife, whether every night he didn’t tell them stories before they went to bed. His enemies in Monrovia, who were jealous of his position, had pretended to believe in these atrocities, and even his mother, back in America, had read about them; but she knew him better, she’d dandled him on her knee, and she didn’t believe. Colonel Davis said, “If you want to know the truth of that story”
Apparently one evening he had heard children crying and had sent soldiers from the camp who found two babies in the swamps. They had been hidden there when Nimley’s tribe took to the bush. The next day he sent more soldiers to search the neighbourhood, and they brought in four more children. He was a mother to those children. He had made the soldiers wash them, had given up his own porridge and the last of his own Vaseline; then next day he had sent men to capture a few women to look after them. These were the very children he had been accused of having burnt alive.
His cook again appeared and said that chop was getting cold. Davis snapped at him, but he had no control over his servants. He was very smart, very astute, but I think it was this which was wrong with him. He came over to my verandah and drank whisky and told us all about his first marriage to a teetotaller and how he had cured her by guile of her prejudice, and his servant kept on popping up at intervals to remind him of chop, while Davis stubbornly sat on, just to show who was master.