About seven we are off again, with Xenia, Head man, Cook, Monrovia
boy and a labourer from Buea - the water-carriers have gone home
after having had their morning chop.
We make for the face of the wall by a route to the left of that I
took on Monday, and when we are clambering up it, some 600 feet
above the hillocks, swish comes a terrific rain-storm at us
accompanied by a squealing, bitter cold wind. We can hear the roar
of the rain on the forest below, and hoping to get above it we keep
on; hoping, however, is vain. The dense mist that comes with it
prevents our seeing more than two yards in front, and we get too far
to the left. I am behind the band to-day, severely bringing up the
rear, and about 1 o'clock I hear shouts from the vanguard and when I
get up to them I find them sitting on the edge of one of the clefts
or scars in the mountain face.
I do not know how these quarry-like chasms have been formed. They
both look alike from below - the mountain wall comes down vertically
into them - and the bottom of this one slopes forward, so that if we
had had the misfortune when a little lower down to have gone a
little further to the left, we should have got on to the bottom of
it, and should have found ourselves walled in on three sides, and
had to retrace our steps; as it is we have just struck its right-
hand edge. And fortunately, the mist, thick as it is, has not been
sufficiently thick to lead the men to walk over it; for had they
done so they would have got killed, as the cliff arches in under so
that we look straight into the bottom of the scar some 200 or 300
feet below, when there is a split in the mist. The sides and bottom
are made of, and strewn with, white, moss-grown masses of volcanic
cinder rock, and sparsely shrubbed with gnarled trees which have
evidently been under fire - one of my boys tells me from the burning
of this face of the mountain by "the Major from Calabar" during the
previous dry season.
We keep on up a steep grass-covered slope, and finally reach the top
of the wall. The immense old crater floor before us is to-day the
site of a seething storm, and the peak itself quite invisible. My
boys are quite demoralised by the cold. I find most of them have
sold the blankets I gave them out at Buana; and those who have not
sold them have left them behind at Buea, from laziness perhaps, but
more possibly from a confidence in their powers to prevent us
getting so far.
I believe if I had collapsed too - the cold tempted me to do so as
nothing else can - they would have lain down and died in the cold
sleety rain.
I sight a clump of gnarled sparsely-foliaged trees bedraped heavily
with lichen, growing in a hollow among the rocks; thither I urge the
men for shelter and they go like storm-bewildered sheep. My bones
are shaking in my skin and my teeth in my head, for after the
experience I had had of the heat here on Monday I dared not clothe
myself heavily.
The men stand helpless under the trees, and I hastily take the load
of blankets Herr Liebert lent us off a boy's back and undo it,
throwing one blanket round each man, and opening my umbrella and
spreading it over the other blankets. Then I give them a tot of rum
apiece, as they sit huddled in their blankets, and tear up a lot of
the brittle, rotten wood from the trees and shrubs, getting horrid
thorns into my hands the while, and set to work getting a fire with
it and the driest of the moss from beneath the rocks. By the aid of
it and Xenia, who soon revived, and a carefully scraped up candle
and a box of matches, the fire soon blazes, Xenia holding a blanket
to shelter it, while I, with a cutlass, chop stakes to fix the
blankets on, so as to make a fire tent.
The other boys now revive, and I hustle them about to make more
fires, no easy work in the drenching rain, but work that has got to
be done. We soon get three well alight, and then I clutch a
blanket - a wringing wet blanket, but a comfort - and wrapping myself
round in it, issue orders for wood to be gathered and stored round
each fire to dry, and then stand over Cook while he makes the men's
already cooked chop hot over our first fire, when this is done
getting him to make me tea, or as it more truly should be called,
soup, for it contains bits of rice and beef, and the general taste
of the affair is wood smoke.
Kefalla by this time is in lecturing form again, so my mind is
relieved about him, although he says, "Oh, ma! It be cold, cold too
much. Too much cold kill we black man, all same for one as too much
sun kill you white man. Oh, ma!. . .," etc. I tell him they have
only got themselves to blame; if they had come up with me on Monday
we should have been hot enough, and missed this storm of rain.
When the boys have had their chop, and are curling themselves up
comfortably round their now blazing fires Xenia must needs start a
theory that there is a better place than this to camp in; he saw it
when he was with an unsuccessful expedition that got as far as this.
Kefalla is fool enough to go off with him to find this place; but
they soon return, chilled through again, and unsuccessful in their
quest.
