Shortly afterwards, Mr. Granville arrived and took over, and we rode out of Keffi, feeling distinctly light-hearted, as we had ‘Leave’ and ‘Home’ before us. But the impression of gloom and sadness left on my mind by Keffi was deepened later, for we never saw Mr. Wilcox again, as he died at Bauchi a few months later. Mr. Carré, one of our cheery party on the Benue River, also died, Mr. Granville was invalided Home later, dangerously ill, and Major Marsh, whose kind genial face was the last we saw on leaving Lokoja, was killed in July at Burmi, to our sorrow.
We started for England at the end of March, and had a most comfortable trip on the Jebba—one of the few voyages I have ever enjoyed; we were fortunate in our weather, our fellow-travellers, and in most of the amenities of boardship life, and I ‘lazed’ on deck, feeling very well satisfied with my first year in Northern Nigeria. I had ridden over three thousand miles, learnt a new language, made thousands of new friends in the animal and flower world, as well as valued human ones, I felt as if I had ‘enlarged my borders’ mentally, and had certainly begun to know and love Africa with a deep affection that, I think, is never lost by those who once acquire it.
My husband was elected to the Hausa Scholarship at Cambridge, and we spent a truly delightful May Term there, which passed only too quickly in the cordial friendship of charming cultured people, and among the lovely surroundings of the University.
CHAPTER V
Trekking North
The following September we turned our faces again towards Nigeria. The ‘Home’ climate had somewhat disgusted us, exemplified as it was by weeks of hopeless, unceasing, soaking rain in Scotland, and, but for the horrible wrench of parting again with our nearest and dearest, we prepared for our return in the most cheerful spirits.
My husband had been appointed to a new Province, eastward from Kano, named Katāgum, one which had come inside the scope of the Administration as a result of the Sokoto Expedition, and hitherto had not been ‘administered’ at all. The prospect of absolutely new ground, the North country, people of a high-class Mahomedan type, all appealed strongly to us both, especially as our way lay through Kano, of which we had all heard so much during the last six months.
To our responsibilities we added an irresistible little fox-terrier, acquiring him absurdly cheap from a dealer, on account of what the latter called a ‘marble’ in his eye—a sort of discoloured patch, which, although, of course, a blemish, did not appear to affect his sight, and was almost certainly the result of a blow. This fact we were able to deduce from subsequent events. Long before we reached Africa, we discovered that Binkie had an undying hatred for any one who had the temerity to wear blue trousers!
He commenced to act on this principle at once, by attempting to bite the guard of the train, made unfriendly overtures to the hall-porters at the hotel in Liverpool, although on the most affectionate terms with every one except the wearers of these obnoxious garments; on the landing-stage, in the intervals of caressing, and being caressed by a little girl, he made purposeful grabs at one and all of the blue-clothed porters, and reached the zenith of his reputation by biting two quarter-masters on board! It was a tiresome, and, incidentally, expensive habit, as we had no muzzle for him, and I only breathed freely on landing in Lokoja, where the majority of the inhabitants are guiltless of blue trousers. To do him credit, I must say he never touched a native, but I had to scan the garments of my callers anxiously, and warn Binkie accordingly!