No, it was extremely unlikely I should be here by myself, but here were my men, sixteen strong and afraid. Akway Pool had been the last water within a safe distance from the hill, and I had not let them halt; now they dared not. A light appeared on the hill, just a point of flickering fire on the ridge, above us now, and I hailed it as a nice friendly gleam telling of human habitation and home, but the men sang and shouted louder than ever. I offered to stop, but the answer was always the same: “This be bad place, Mammy. We go.”
At last, without asking my leave, they put down the hammock, and the carriers flung themselves down panting.
“We stop small, Mammy”; and I sat on my box and watched the great, sinewy men with strapping shoulders as they lay on the ground resting. They had been afraid I was sure, and I knew no reason for their fear.
But the night was past and it was morning, morning now though it was only half-past three and the sun would not be up till close on six o'clock. On again. The moon had swung low to the dawn, and the gathering clouds made it darker than it had yet been, while the stars that peeped between the clouds were like flakes of newly washed silver. People began to pass us, ghostlike figures in the gloom. Greetings were exchanged, news was shouted from one party to the other, and I, in spite of the discomfort of the hammock, was dead with sleep, and kept dropping into oblivion and waking with a start to the wonder and strangeness of my surroundings. Deeper and deeper grew the oblivion in the darkness that precedes the dawn, till I wakened suddenly to find myself underneath a European bungalow, and knew that for the first time in my experience of African travel I had arrived nearly two hours before I expected to.
My people were wild with delight and triumph. I had forced them to come through the Krobo country by night, but my authority did not suffice to keep them quiet now they had come through in safety. They chattered and shouted and yelled, and a policeman who was doing sentry outside the Provincial Commissioner's bungalow started to race upstairs. I tried to stop him, and might as well have tried to stop a whirlwind. Indeed, when I heard him hammering on the door I was strongly of opinion that the Commissioner would think that the whirlwind had arrived. But presently down those steps came a very big Scotchman in a dressing-gown, with his hair on end, just roused from his sleep, and he resolved himself into one of those courteous, kindly gentlemen England is blessed with as representatives in the dark corners of the earth.
Did he reproach me? Not at all. He perjured himself so far as to say he was glad to see me, and he took me upstairs and gave me whisky-and-soda because it was so late, and then tea and fruit because it was so early. And then in the dawning I looked out over Krobo Hill, and my host told me its story.
“I cleared them out years ago. I have no doubt they have their blood sacrifices somewhere, but not on Krobo Hill. But the people are still afraid.”
“I saw a fire there last night.”
He shook his head unbelieving.
“Impossible; there is a fine of fifty pounds for anyone found on Krobo Hill.”