“Where are the carriers?” I demanded.
“They chop,” said he nonchalantly, as if it were no affair of his.
“Chop! At this hour in the morning?” It was close on seven.
He signified that they did.
“Bring the headman.” And I was a very angry white missus indeed. Since I had got through the night all right I felt I was bound to do somthing today and I was not nearly so afraid as I had been.
The headman wept palm-wine tears. “They chop,” he said and he sobbed and gulped and wiped his face with the back of his hand like a discomfited Somersetshire laburer. His condition immensely improved my courage. I was the white woman all over dealing with the inferior race, and I had not a doubt as to what should be done.
“Policeman, you follow me.”
He did not like it much, my little Fanti policeman, because he feared these Mendis and Timinis who could have eaten him alive, but he followed me however reluctantly. I wanted him as representing law and order. The thinking I intended to do myself.
We walked down to the village and there in the middle of the road were my carriers in two parties, each seated round a large enamelled-iron basin full of fish and rice. They did chop. They looked up at me with a grin, but I had quite made up my mind.
“Policeman,” I said, “no man chops so late. Throw away the chop.”