Suddenly I saw a break in the lava nearly full of beautiful water. I pulled Mr. Buck’s arm, pointing to it, and mumbled, “Water.” Slowly he pulled off his coat and started to climb down the crack. It was about eight feet wide, narrowing to three. I leaned over the side, holding the canteen for Mr. Buck to fill. He went down a few feet, and then stopped. I motioned to him to fill the bottle, croaking, “Water.” He did not look around, but mumbled, “I see no water,” as if in a dream. Picking up a piece of lava, I tossed it down and cried hoarsely, “There is the water.” But to my astonishment the pebble went down, down, down, out of sight, with no sound of a splash, into a fathomless abyss. The crevice was so deep that we could not see the bottom, and the shock of the discovery made me faint. How Sterns Buck managed to return he does not remember; it is a wonder he did not fall, to be mangled upon the sharp corners of lava.
I came to my senses dazed and almost bewildered, and Buck and I sat motionless for some time staring at each other. After a time we scrambled on again until we came upon the guide sitting upon the edge of a high crack, eating frozen snow, and tearing at it with his teeth like a hungry dog. We followed his example, not without pain, but the snow tasted good.
Some of the party who had previously returned met us near the summit with coffee. When they saw us coming they got things ready so as to make us as comfortable as possible. After washing our lacerated hands and feet we took a good sleep, and awoke much refreshed. The journey home was, comparatively speaking, easy, but the memory of that night amidst the lava will last me to my dying day.
By Thomas B. Marshall.
An exciting story told by a former official of the Gold Coast Government. With a friend and some natives he went out to shoot a marauding leopard. They accomplished their mission, but before the day was over one and all of the party had received a good deal more than they bargained for.
In 1899, while in the service of the Gold Coast Government, and stationed at Kumasi, I received orders “per bearer, who will accompany you,” to proceed to a point on Volta not far south of where it debouches from among the Saraga Hills. “The bearer,” a nice young fellow called Strange, was newly arrived in the colony, and his pleasant home gossip was not less welcome to me than my information about the country we were in was to him. Our rough forest journey, then, passed as pleasantly as such journeys can, and by the time we arrived at our destination we were the best of friends.
Akroful, a town of about seven hundred inhabitants, was the nearest place of any size to the spot where we pitched our camp, and we were soon on good terms with its headman, Otibu Daku, and his son, Dansani, both of whom put us in the way of some good shooting.