"It's a powerful thing is the paw-paw.
Why, the other day we had a sad case along here. You know what a
nuisance young assistants are, bothering about their chop, and
scorpions in their beds and boots, and what not and a half, and
then, when you have pulled them through these, and often enough
before, pegging out with fever, or going on the fly in the native
town. Did you know poor B - -? Well! he's dead now, had fever and
went off like a babe in eight hours though he'd been out fourteen
years for A - - and D - -. They sent him out a new book-keeper, a
tender young thing with a dairymaid complexion and the notion that
he'd got the indigestion. He fidgeted about it something awful.
One night there was a big paw-paw on the table for evening chop, and
so B - -, who was an awfully good chap, told him about how good it
was for the digestion. The book-keeper said his trouble always came
on two hours after eating, and asked if he might take a bit of the
thing to his room. 'Certainly,' says B - -, and as the paw-paw
wasn't cut at that meal the book-keeper quietly took it off whole
with him.
"In the morning time he did not turn up. B - -, just before
breakfast, went to his room and he wasn't there, but he noticed the
paw-paw was on the bed and that was all, so he thought the book-
keeper must have gone for a walk, being, as it were, a bit too
tender to have gone on the fly as yet. So he just told the store
clerk to tell the people to return him to the firm when they found
him straying around lost, and thought no more about it, being, as it
was, mail-day, and him busy.
"Well! Fortunately the steward boy put that paw-paw on the table
again for twelve o'clock chop. If it hadn't been for that, not a
living soul would have known the going of the book-keeper. For when
B - - cut it open, there, right inside it, were nine steel trouser-
buttons, a Waterbury watch, and the poor young fellow's keys. For
you see, instead of his digesting his dinner with that paw-paw, the
paw-paw took charge and digested him, dinner and all, and when B - -
interrupted it, it was just getting a grip on the steel things.
There's an awful lot of pepsine in a paw-paw, and if you hang, etc.,
etc."
I collapsed, feebly murmuring that it was very interesting, but sad
for the poor young fellow's friends.
"Not necessarily," said the old coaster. So he had the last word,
and never again will I attempt to alter the ways of the genuine old
coaster. What you have got to do with him is to be very thankful
you have had the honour of knowing him.
Still I think we do over-estimate the value of the papaw, although I
certainly did once myself hang the leg of a goat no mortal man could
have got tooth into, on to a papaw tree with a bit of string for the
night. In the morning it was clean gone, string and all; but
whether it was the pepsine, the papaine, or a purloining pagan that
was the cause of its departure there was no evidence to show. Yet I
am myself, as Hans Breitmann says, "still skebdigal" as to the
papaw, and I dare say you are too.
But I must forthwith stop writing about the Gold Coast, or I shall
go on telling you stories and wasting your time, not to mention the
danger of letting out those which would damage the nerves of the
cultured of temperate climes, such as those relating to the youth
who taught himself French from a six months' method book; of the man
who wore brass buttons; the moving story of three leeches and two
gentlemen; the doctor up a creek; and the reason why you should not
eat pork along here because all the natives have either got the
guinea-worm, or kraw-kraw or ulcers; and then the pigs go and - dear
me! it was a near thing that time. I'll leave off at once.
CHAPTER II. FERNANDO PO AND THE BUBIS.
Giving some account of the occupation of this island by the whites
and the manners and customs of the blacks peculiar to it.
Our outward voyage really terminated at Calabar, and it terminated
gorgeously in fireworks and what not, in honour of the coming of
Lady MacDonald, the whole settlement, white and black, turning out
to do her honour to the best of its ability; and its ability in this
direction was far greater than, from my previous knowledge of Coast
conditions, I could have imagined possible. Before Sir Claude
MacDonald settled down again to local work, he and Lady MacDonald
crossed to Fernando Po, still in the Batanga, and I accompanied
them, thus getting an opportunity of seeing something of Spanish
official circles.
I had heard sundry noble legends of Fernando Po, and seen the coast
and a good deal of the island before, but although I had heard much
of the Governor, I had never met him until I went up to his
residence with Lady MacDonald and the Consul-General. He was a
delightful person, who, as a Spanish naval officer, some time
resident in Cuba, had picked up a lot of English, with a strong
American accent clinging to it. He gave a most moving account of
how, as soon as his appointment as Governor was announced, all his
friends and acquaintances carefully explained to him that this
appointment was equivalent to execution, only more uncomfortable in
the way it worked out. During the outward voyage this was daily
confirmed by the stories told by the sailors and merchants
personally acquainted with the place, who were able to support their
information with dates and details of the decease of the victims to
the climate.
