Curiously enough, too, a somewhat similar incident occurred here in connection with a leopard; and this also took place in the evening. The men had been talking about these animals, and of how plentiful they were, until their stories rather got on my nerves. "Oh, bother your leopards," I cried. "I don't believe there is one within a hundred miles." I spoke in jest of course, and looked towards Schomburgk expecting him to laugh. Instead, he held up a warning hand, as if to enjoin silence, while with the other he pointed to what looked to me like a black shadow slinking slowly past where we were sitting, and not more than five or six yards distant. "A leopard!" he whispered. Hodgson and I both laughed, thinking he was joking, and that what we had seen was probably nothing more dangerous or uncommon than a native dog. We were sitting outside our hut as usual, and without a light, for the night, though dark, was fine and warm. But Schomburgk was quite sure, and he called up the native boys, who lit lamps, and there, sure enough, clearly discernible even to my inexperienced eyes, in the soft sand, was the spoor of a big, full-grown leopard. He must have come our way from the village, climbed up on to the plateau, spotted us, and slunk off between the huts, and so escaped. When we came back from examining the spoor, Hodgson said to me, remembering our former experience with the snake: "Well, you're a prophetess the wrong way about; only say you don't believe in elephants, and I'll go and load my gun."
From the 10th to the 13th of December, I suffered from a relapse of fever, and had to lay up, but during the rest of the time, as I have said before, we were kept pretty busy. There were seven horses to look after, and I usually superintended their early morning toilet myself, taking my coffee by the stables at six o'clock. Every afternoon we went riding, and the mornings were devoted to acting, or filming ethnological subjects. One thing, there was no lack of supers for our dramatic scenes at Bafilo. Once, when we asked for fifty negroes, fully a thousand turned up. Naturally they all wanted to be taken on, and the noise and clamour they made was simply deafening.
One day a "woman palaver" caused considerable trouble. The word "palaver," I may explain, stands for anything and everything in West Africa. Originally it meant a talk, a formal conference or conversation. Nowadays any happening in the least out of the common is referred to as a palaver. If, for example, you go to buy a horse—that is a "horse palaver." Does the cook spoil or steal your rations? There follows a "cook palaver." And so on. Most frequent of all, however, are the woman palavers, for my fair but frail sex was, I found, the cause of fully as much trouble in Togo as it is generally credited with being elsewhere. Cherchez la femme.
This particular case began in this way. During the afternoon, while the men were away shooting, a native came from the village to complain that one of our soldiers—we had two as escort provided by the Government—had decoyed away his daughter, a girl of fourteen or fifteen. She had, he said, been sent to the market that morning to buy provisions, and the "soldier" had met her, and induced her to go away with him. I called the soldiers before me, and questioned them jointly and severally, but they both denied most strenuously having had anything to say to any girl, one of them adding, with a great show of virtuous indignation, that he had a wife of his own in Sokode. This latter assertion, however, though doubtless correct, did not greatly impress me, because I had only the evening before come across him canoodling one of the native women on the outskirts of the camp.
While I was trying to get at the bottom of the matter, Schomburgk returned and, on my explaining to him what it was all about, he called Alfred, our chief interpreter, and ordered him to translate the man's story carefully, and word for word. This, however, Alfred seemed either unwilling or unable to do, so we called in the aid of Mseu, another interpreter, who understood the Bafilo dialect better than Alfred did. Mseu heard what the man had to say, and translated it sentence by sentence, adding voluntarily, after he had finished, that, in his opinion, the man was a liar. I began to think so myself, for it suddenly occurred to me that the two soldiers had been about the camp practically all the morning, and could not, therefore, have been down in Bafilo, philandering with native girls.
The man, however, insisted that what he said was correct, and that his daughter was even now concealed in our camp, so we told him to go with Mseu and see if he could find her. This he appeared unwilling to do, and Mseu also, but Schomburgk insisted, and eventually they went off together, to return presently with the girl. This, of course, was a serious matter, as these sort of "women palavers" may easily lead to grave bother with the natives. So we held a sort of informal Court of Inquiry, and went thoroughly into the matter. In the end we found that it was Mseu himself who had taken the girl away. Schomburgk fined the delinquent ten shillings—a big sum to him—to be handed over as compensation to the girl's father, and gave him the option of taking a letter to the Government Commissioner at Sokode, or of suffering personal chastisement at his hands there and then. He promptly chose the latter alternative, and Schomburgk gave it to him soundly. He yelled like a hyena, and screamed for mercy, to the huge delight of our boys, for Mseu was always greatly interested and pleased when anybody else got a hiding. Afterwards I took the girl aside, and gave her a good talking to, but I am sorry to say it seemed to make very little impression on her. To all my questions as to how she came to act in such a wicked manner—for it transpired that she had gone away with Mseu quite willingly—she would only reply in snappy monosyllables, or by that forward and upward thrust of the chin which is everywhere associated with sulky indifference. Once only did she show any sign of interest or animation, and that was when I asked her if she had gone with the man because she loved him. "Love him!" she cried indignantly. "Indeed no. He is old and ugly. But—he gave me this." And she pointed to a string of common white beads, value perhaps three-halfpence, which she was wearing round her throat. Poor child! To her they were a rope of rarest pearls, and for ropes of pearls, I reflected, European women, dainty and well-educated and well-bred, have ere now been not unwilling to barter their honour.
A Hausa Woman
Note the curious helmet-like way of dressing her hair. This is only one of many similar eccentric methods in vogue amongst these people.
