The Water Has Simply Streamed
Down It, And Formed A Nice Little Pool In A Rocky Hollow Where I
Keep
My feet, and I am chilled to the innermost bone, so have to
scramble up and drag my box to
The side of Kefalla and Xenia's fire,
feeling sure I have contracted a fatal chill this time. I scrape
the ashes out of the fire into a heap, and put my sodden boots into
them, and they hiss merrily, and I resolve not to go to sleep again.
5 A.M. - Have been to sleep twice, and have fallen off my box bodily
into the fire in my wet blankets, and should for sure have put it
out like a bucket of cold water had not Xenia and Kefalla been
roused up by the smother I occasioned and rescued me - or the fire.
It is not raining now, but it is bitter cold and Cook is getting my
tea. I give the boys a lot of hot tea with a big handful of sugar
in, and they then get their own food hot.
CHAPTER XX. THE GREAT PEAK OF CAMEROONS - (continued).
Setting forth how the Voyager attains the summit of Mungo Mah Lobeh,
and descends therefrom to Victoria, to which is added some remarks
on the natural history of the West Coast porter, and the native
methods of making fire.
September 26th. - The weather is undecided and so am I, for I feel
doubtful about going on in this weather, but I do not like to give
up the peak after going through so much for it. The boys being dry
and warm with the fires have forgotten their troubles. However, I
settle in my mind to keep on, and ask for volunteers to come with
me, and Bum, the head man, and Xenia announce their willingness. I
put two tins of meat and a bottle of Herr Liebert's beer into the
little wooden box, and insist on both men taking a blanket apiece,
much to their disgust, and before six o'clock we are off over the
crater plain. It is a broken bit of country with rock mounds
sparsely overgrown with tufts of grass, and here and there are
patches of boggy land, not real bog, but damp places where grow
little clumps of rushes, and here and there among the rocks sorely-
afflicted shrubs of broom, and the yellow-flowered shrub I have
mentioned before, and quantities of very sticky heather, feeling
when you catch hold of it as if it had been covered with syrup. One
might fancy the entire race of shrubs was dying out; for one you see
partially alive there are twenty skeletons which fall to pieces as
you brush past them.
It is downhill the first part of the way, that is to say, the trend
of the land is downhill, for be it down or up, the details of it are
rugged mounds and masses of burnt-out lava rock. It is evil going,
but perhaps not quite so evil as the lower hillocks of the great
wall where the rocks are hidden beneath long slippery grass. We
wind our way in between the mounds, or clamber over them, or
scramble along their sides impartially. The general level is then
flat, and then comes a rise towards the peak wall, so we steer
N.N.E. until we strike the face of the peak, and then commence a
stiff rough climb.
We keep as straight as we can, but get driven at an angle by the
strange ribs of rock which come straight down. These are most
tiresome to deal with, getting worse the higher we go, and so rotten
and weather-eaten are they that they crumble into dust and fragments
under our feet. Head man gets half a dozen falls, and when we are
about three parts of the way up Xenia gives in. The cold and the
climbing are too much for him, so I make him wrap himself up in his
blanket, which he is glad enough of now, and shelter in a depression
under one of the many rock ridges, and Head man and I go on. When
we are some 600 feet higher the iron-grey mist comes curling and
waving round the rocks above us, like some savage monster defending
them from intruders, and I again debate whether I was justified in
risking the men, for it is a risk for them at this low temperature,
with the evil weather I know, and they do not know, is coming on.
But still we have food and blankets with us enough for them, and the
camp in the plain below they can reach all right, if the worst comes
to the worst; and for myself - well - that's my own affair, and no one
will be a ha'porth the worse if I am dead in an hour. So I hitch
myself on to the rocks, and take bearings, particularly bearings of
Xenia's position, who, I should say, has got a tin of meat and a
flask of rum with him, and then turn and face the threatening mist.
It rises and falls, and sends out arm-like streams towards us, and
then Bum, the head man, decides to fail for the third time to reach
the peak, and I leave him wrapped in his blanket with the bag of
provisions, and go on alone into the wild, grey, shifting, whirling
mist above, and soon find myself at the head of a rock ridge in a
narrowish depression, walled by massive black walls which show
fitfully but firmly through the mist.
I can see three distinctly high cones before me, and then the mist,
finding it cannot drive me back easily, proceeds to desperate
methods, and lashes out with a burst of bitter wind, and a sheet of
blinding, stinging rain. I make my way up through it towards a peak
which I soon see through a tear in the mist is not the highest, so I
angle off and go up the one to the left, and after a desperate fight
reach the cairn - only, alas!
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