However, I had not much time to devote to sight-seeing, for very early on the morning after our arrival we set out to journey up country to a place called Atakpame, distant about 110 miles from Lome. A railway runs so far; and at the rail-head civilisation may be said to come abruptly to an end.
[CHAPTER II]
HOW WE FILMED "THE WHITE GODDESS OF THE WANGORA"
Oh that railway journey! Shall I ever forget it? The dust and heat were awful, and owing to some unaccountable oversight, nobody had thought to lay in any provisions for the trip, which lasted from six o'clock in the morning till four in the afternoon. The only food we were able to obtain en route consisted of monkey nuts. Our thirst, however, we quenched quite satisfactorily with luscious, juicy pine-apples, of which the natives brought us unlimited supplies at every stopping-place, offering them clamorously for sale at the uniform rate of one penny each.
Arrived at Atakpame, we were given a right royal welcome by Baron Codelli von Fahnenfeld, who is building for the German Government, at Kamina near by, an immense wireless station, intended to communicate direct with the wireless station at Nauen, just outside Berlin.
The baron first introduced to me my "house," a straw hut, like all the dwellings hereabouts, but, as he proudly pointed out, it was, unlike them, possessed of a cement floor. I duly thanked him, and tried to smile my gratitude. But my heart misgave me, for to my mind it seemed to lack pretty well all the essentials that a dwelling-place should by rights possess.
To begin with, it most certainly was not weather-proof, for I could see, through the interstices of the loosely-thatched roof, the stars twinkling far above. The wind blew in the front and out at the back, and I was conscious, all the time I was dressing for dinner, that I was the cynosure of several hundred pairs of eyes, belonging to as many natives, men and women, who, "clad in the climate," as the saying is out there, crowded in serried ranks all round the wattle walls, anxious for a glimpse through the all too numerous chinks at the wonderful white woman timidly robing and disrobing within.
But dinner made amends for everything. We were the baron's guests for that evening. It was a glorious, gorgeous meal, beautifully prepared and perfectly served under conditions which seemed ideal to me, partly no doubt because they were so altogether novel. The warm African night was absolutely still, save for the continual monotonous humming of myriads of insects. All around was the silent mysterious bush, from which came no sound, either of man, or of beast, or of bird.
And we—we were in a little gastronomic world of our own; a tiny bit of London, or Paris, or Berlin, planted out in the wild. There was the same sheen of damask napery, the same glitter of crystal and silver, the same faint, almost imperceptible perfume of exotics, as one associates mentally with, say, the Ritz or the Savoy. Only the servitors here, instead of wearing black clothes and having white faces, were ebon black in colour, and their liveries were white, all white, from head to foot, save for the silver blazonry of the baron's crest.