I do not meddle with anything, save to take a few
specimens and to put a few more rocks on the cairn, and to put in
among them my card, merely as a civility to Mungo, a civility his
Majesty will soon turn into pulp. Not that it matters - what is done
is done.
The weather grows worse every minute, and no sign of any clearing
shows in the indigo sky or the wind-reft mist. The rain lashes so
fiercely I cannot turn my face to it and breathe, the wind is all I
can do to stand up against.
Verily I am no mountaineer, for there is in me no exultation, but
only a deep disgust because the weather has robbed me of my main
object in coming here, namely to get a good view and an idea of the
way the unexplored mountain range behind Calabar trends. I took my
chance and it failed, so there's nothing to complain about.
Comforting myself with these reflections, I start down to find Bum,
and do so neatly, and then together we scramble down carefully among
the rotten black rocks, intent on finding Xenia. The scene is very
grand. At one minute we can see nothing save the black rocks and
cinders under foot; the next the wind-torn mist separates now in one
direction, now in another, showing us always the same wild scene of
great black cliffs, rising in jagged peaks and walls around and
above us. I think this walled cauldron we had just left is really
the highest crater on Mungo. {439}
We soon become anxious about Xenia, for this is a fearfully easy
place to lose a man in such weather, but just as we get below the
thickest part of the pall of mist, I observe a doll-sized figure,
standing on one leg taking on or off its trousers - our lost Xenia,
beyond a shadow of a doubt, and we go down direct to him.
When we reach him we halt, and I give the two men one of the tins of
meat, and take another and the bottle of beer myself, and then make
a hasty sketch of the great crater plain below us. At the further
edge of the plain a great white cloud is coming up from below, which
argues badly for our trip down the great wall to the forest camp,
which I am anxious to reach before nightfall after our experience of
the accommodation afforded by our camp in the crater plain last
night.
While I am sitting waiting for the men to finish their meal, I feel
a chill at my back, as if some cold thing had settled there, and
turning round, see the mist from the summit above coming in a wall
down towards us. These mists up here, as far as my experience goes,
are always preceded by a strange breath of ice-cold air - not
necessarily a wind.
Bum then draws my attention to a strange funnel-shaped thing coming
down from the clouds to the north. A big waterspout, I presume: it
seems to be moving rapidly N.E., and I profoundly hope it will hold
that course, for we have quite as much as we can manage with the
ordinary rain-water supply on this mountain, without having
waterspouts to deal with.
We start off down the mountain as rapidly as we can. Xenia is very
done up, and Head man comes perilously near breaking his neck by
frequent falls among the rocks; my unlucky boots are cut through and
through by the latter. When we get down towards the big crater
plain, it is a race between us and the pursuing mist as to who shall
reach the camp first, and the mist wins, but we have just time to
make out the camp's exact position before it closes round us, so we
reach it without any real difficulty. When we get there, about one
o'clock, I find the men have kept the fires alight and Cook is
asleep before one of them with another conflagration smouldering in
his hair. I get him to make me tea, while the others pack up as
quickly as possible, and by two we are all off on our way down to
the forest camp.
The boys are nervous in their way of going down over the mountain
wall. The misadventures of Cook alone would fill volumes. Monrovia
boy is out and away the best man at this work. Just as we reach the
high jungle grass, down comes the rain and up comes the mist, and we
have the worst time we have had during our whole trip, in our
endeavours to find the hole in the forest that leads to our old
camp.
Unfortunately, I must needs go in for acrobatic performances on the
top of one of the highest, rockiest hillocks. Poising myself on one
leg I take a rapid slide sideways, ending in a very showy leap
backwards which lands me on the top of the lantern I am carrying to-
day, among miscellaneous rocks. There being fifteen feet or so of
jungle grass above me, all the dash and beauty of my performance are
as much thrown away as I am, for my boys are too busy on their own
accounts in the mist to miss me. After resting some little time as
I fell, and making and unmaking the idea in my mind that I am
killed, I get up, clamber elaborately to the top of the next
hillock, and shout for the boys, and "Ma," "ma," comes back from my
flock from various points out of the fog.
