“Who is in charge?” and I expected to hear some negro post office or Custom official.
“Dr Dove,” said the stranger in the slurring tones of the negro.
“A white man?”
“Yes, a white man.”
For all my weariness, I could have shouted for joy. Such an unexpected piece of good luck! I had not expected to meet a white man this side of Cape Coast. I had thought the great Castle here was abandoned to the tender mercies of the negro official.
“You can get in,” went on my new friend; “the drawbridge is not down yet.”
A drawbridge! How mediaeval it sounded, quite in keeping with the day I had spent, the day that had begun in Chama fifty years ago.
We staggered along the causeway, the causeway made so many hundreds of years ago by the old Portuguese adventurers; the sentry rose up in astonishment, and we staggered across it into the old courtyard; I got out of my hammock at the foot of a flight of broad stone steps, built when men built generously, and a policeman, not mine, raced up before me. All was in darkness in the great hall, and then I heard an unmistakable white man's voice in tones of surprise and unbelief.
“A missus, a———”
I stepped forward in the pitchy darkness, wondering what pitfalls there might be by the way.