CHAPTER XIX—FACING DEATH
The Spanish nuns—One of the loneliest settlements in West Africa—Hospitality and swamp—A capable English woman—A big future in store for Addah—The mosquitoes of Addah—The glorious skies—Difficulties of getting away—A tremendous tornado—The bar steamer—The boiling bar—“We've had enough!”—Would rather be drowned in the open—The dismantled ship—Everybody stark—The gallant engineer—On the French steamer bound for Accra.
At Addah, at the mouth of the Volta, a place that exists solely for the transport, there is the very worst surf on all this surf-bound coast. There is a big native town a few miles up the river, but here at its entrance live the handful of Europeans, either right on the beach or on the banks of the river, over a mile away, with a great swamp between. The river is wide at its mouth, and the miles of swamp lend to the country an air at once weird and austere.
“Enter not here,” cries the surf; “enter not here.” But when its dangers have been dared, and the white man has set foot on the Dark Continent, the swamp takes up the refrain in another key, more sullenly threatening.
“In spite of warning you have crossed the outworks. Now, see how you like the swamp and the mosquito, the steaming heat and the blazing sun.” And men come still, as they came three or four hundred years ago.
But I, for one, did not much like the landing. The Captain of the Bathurst explained that he had had no intention of calling at Addah, but hearing that there was a white woman on the beach wanting to go, he of his courtesy had decided to take her, and he wanted to be off as he wished to discharge cargo at Pram-Pram before it grew dark. And here, for once, on board an African steamer I found the women passengers largely outnumbering the men, for they had on board a number of nuns who had been exiled from San Paul de Loanda. They were Spanish, French, and German Sisters in the costume of their order; gentle, kindly women with faces that bore evident marks of an indoor life in the Tropics, a mark that cannot be mistaken. They had been very very frightened at first, and they were still very seasick, but the sailormen had made them most kindly welcome, for their sakes were staunch Monarchists when Portugal was spoken of, and they brought them the captain's cat to play with, and looked with deepest admiration on their wonderful embroidery. Never was so much sewing before seen on an African steamer.
I unwittingly added to their woes, for the surf was bad at Addah.
“We'll whistle and the bar steamer will come out for you,” said the captain, and the steamer gave vent to the most heartrending wails.
In the distance I could see a most furious white surf, a palm or two cutting the sky line, and a speck or two that were probably bungalows, but it was a typical African shore and I didn't like the look of it at all. It is bad enough to go to a place uninvited, not to know where you are going to be put up, but when to that is added a bad surf, you wish—well, you wish it was well over. The ship rolled sickeningly in the swell; the Sisters, first one and then another, disappeared, to come back with faces in all shades of green whiteness, and the ruddy-faced captain paced the deck with an impatience that he in vain tried to control, and I felt an unutterable brute. If I had been seasick it would have crowned things; luckily for myself I am not given that way. At intervals the Bathurst let off shrieks, plaintive and angry, and we went to lunch. I felt I might as well have luncheon, a luncheon to which I really had a right.
“You'll have to come on with us to Pram-Pram,” said the captain; “the beach is evidently too bad.”