“Where?” said my patient headman, who after nearly a fortnight had failed to fathom the white woman's vagaries.
There was a verandah facing the town and a verandah facing the forest, and I promptly chose the bush side as lending itself more to privacy. Very vehemently that headman protested.
“It no be fit, Ma, it no be fit. Bush close too much”; so at length I gave in, and had the bed put up on the verandah facing the town. On the other end, I decided, the medical officer and I would chop. For we had been most friendly coming down, and had had all our meals together.
Before dinner I think the whole of the women of that village had been to see me, and had eaten up the very last of my biscuits, but I did not mind, for was it not the end of the journey, and they were so interested, and so smiling, and so nice. We had dinner, and we burned up the last of the whisky to make a flare over the plum-pudding; and then the medical officer wished me good night and wended his way to his house somewhere in the town, Grant and the cook betook themselves to another hut nearer the town and barricaded the door, and then suddenly I realised that I was entirely alone on the edge of this vast, mysterious, unexplainable forest. And the headman had said “the bush no be fit.” I ought to have remembered Anum Mount and Potsikrom, but I didn't. I crept into bed and once more gave myself up to the most unreasoning terror. What I expected to come out of that forest I do not know. What I should have done had anything come I'm sure I do not know, but never again do I want to spend such a night. The patter of the rain on the iron roof made me shiver, the sighing of the wind in the branches sent fingers clutching at my heart; when I dropped into a doze I waked in deadly terror, my hands and face were clammy with sweat, and I dozed and waked, and dozed and waked, till, when the dawn came breaking through the clouds at last, it seemed as if the night had stretched itself into an interminable length. And yet nothing had happened; there had been nothing to be afraid of, not even a leopard had cried, but so tired was I with my own terrors that I slept in my hammock most of the way into Kumasi.
And here my trip practically ended. I stayed a day or two longer, wandering round this great, new trading-centre, and then I took train to Sekondi, stayed once more with my kind friend, Miss Oram, the nursing Sister there, gathered together my goods and chattels, and on a day when it was raining as if never again could the sun shine, I went down in the transport officer's hammock for the last time; for the last time went through the surf, and reached the deck of the Dakar, bound for England.
