Alone in West Africa

by Mary Gaunt

It was very kind of him, but I felt I had trespassed on their kindness long enough; besides, there were other parts of the Coast I wished to see, and I felt I must take this opportunity of getting out of Addah. What was a bad bar? I had faced the surf before. So I bid them farewell, with many grateful thanks, and went on board, and in all the glory of the morning we set off down the river.

I was the only white passenger on board, and was allowed to stand on the bridge beside the wheel. Behind me was a little house wherein I might have taken shelter, but I thought I might as well see all there was to be seen; besides, I held my camera in my hand and proposed to take photographs of this “bad bar.”

The mouth of the Volta is utterly lonely looking. A long sandpit ran out on the right hand, whereon grew a solitary bush, blighted, for there was not a sign of a leaf upon it, and to the left was also sand, with a few scattered palms. I fancy there must have been a native hut or two, though I do not remember them, for I remember the captain saying, “We have to make our own marks. When you get a hut in line with a certain tree you know you are in the channel.” I was glad to hear there was a channel, for to my uninitiated eyes we seemed heading for a wild waste of boiling water, worse than anything I had ever conceived of, and yet I was not unaccustomed to surf, and had faced it before now in a surf boat. Never again shall I face surf with equanimity. I tried to carry out my programme, but I fear I must have been too upset to withdraw the slides, for I got no photographs. Presently we appeared to be right in the middle of the swirl. The waves rose up like mountains on either side, and towards us would come a great smooth green hill of water which towered far above our heads and then, breaking, swept right over us with a tremendous crash. I can see now the sunlight on that hill; it made it look like green glass, and then, when the foam came, there were all the colours of the rainbow. Again and again the two men at the wheel were flung off, their cloths seemed to be ripped from them as if they had been their shells, and the ship trembled from stem to stern and stood still. I thought, “Is this a bad bar? I'm afraid, I'm afraid,” but as the captain came scrambling to the wheel to take the place of the men who had been thrown off I did not quite like to say anything. It is extraordinary how hard it is to make one believe there really is anything to fear, and I should hate to be a nuisance at a critical moment, so I said to the captain—he and I and the German engineer were the only white people on board: “It's magnificent.”

He was holding on to the wheel by my side and a naked black man, stripped by the ruthless water, was holding on to it on the other, and I could see the moisture on his strained face. Was it sweat or sea water?

“Magnificent!” said he. “Don't you see we can't stand it? We've had enough!”

So that was it. We were going down. At least, not exactly going down, but the water was battering us to pieces. I learned then that what I was afraid of was fear, for now I was not afraid. It had come, then, I thought. This was the end of the life where sometimes I had been so intensely happy and sometimes I had been so intensely miserable that I had wanted to die. Not so very long ago, and now I was going to die. Presently those waters that were soaking me through and through would wash over me once for all and I was not even afraid. I thought nothing for those few moments, except how strange that it was all over. I wondered if I had better go into the little house behind me, but no, I saw I was not in the way of the men at the wheel. I could hear the crashing of broken wood all round me, and I thought if I were to be drowned I would rather be drowned in the open. Why I held on to my camera I do not know. That, I think, was purely mechanical. The waves beat on the ship from all quarters, and so apparently held her steady, and I might just as well hold on to the camera as to anything else. I certainly never expected to use it again. Crash, crash, crash came the tons of water, there was a ripping of broken wood, and a human wail that told me that crew and black passengers had realised their danger. Crash, crash, crash. It seemed to me the time was going very slowly, and then suddenly the ship seemed to give a leap forward, and instead of the waves crashing on to us we were riding over them, and the captain seized me by the arm.

“Come inside. You're wet to the skin.”

“But———”

“We're all right. But, my God, you'll never be nearer to it.”

And then I looked around me to see the havoc that the bar had wrought. The bulwarks were swept away, the boats were smashed, the great crane for working cargo was smashed and useless, the galley was swept overboard, the top of the engine-house was broken in, and, transformation scene, every solitary creature on board that little ship, with the exception of the captain and me, was stark. Custom-house officers had stripped off their uniforms, clerks who had come to tally cargo in all the glory of immaculate shirts and high-starched collars were nude, and the black men who worked the ship had got rid of their few rags as superfluous. Everyone had made ready to face the surf.