One of them, elbowing his way towards me, asked in broken English:

"Massa have good voyage--eh?" whereupon the others laughed heartily at
hearing one of their number speak the language of the white men. But
Kouaga approached uttering angry words, and from that moment the same
respect was paid to me as to Omar.

We found there was a small village where we landed, otherwise the coast
was wild and desolate. In an uncleanly little hut to which we were taken
when our boxes were landed and the excitement had subsided, we were
regaled with various African delicacies, which at first I did not find
palatable, but which Omar devoured with a relish, declaring that he had
not enjoyed a meal so much since he had left "the Coast" for England.
But I did not care for yams, and the stewed monkey looked suspiciously
like a cooked human specimen. My geographical knowledge was not so
extensive as it might have been, and I was not certain whether these
natives were not cannibals. Therefore I only made a pretence of eating,
and sat silently contemplating the strange scene as we all sat upon the
floor and took up our food with our fingers. When we had concluded the
feast a native woman served Omar with some palm wine, which, however, he
did not drink, but poured it upon the ground as an offering to the fetish
for his safe return, and then we threw ourselves upon the skins stretched
out for us and slept till dawn.

At sunrise I got up and went out. The place was, I discovered, even more
desolate than I had imagined. Nothing met the eye in every direction but
vast plains of interminable sand, with hillocks here and there, also of
sand; no trees were to be seen, not even a shrub; all was arid, dry and
parched up with heat. The village was merely an assemblage of a dozen
miserable mud huts, and so great was the monotony of the scene, that the
eye rested with positive pleasure on the dirty, yellow-coloured craft in
which we had landed during the night. It had apparently once been
whitewashed, but had gradually assumed that tawny hue that always
characterises the African wilderness.

Again Omar and I were surrounded by the crowd of fierce-looking
barbarians, but the twenty stalwart carriers sent down from Mo,
apparently considering themselves a superior race to these
coast-dwellers, ordered them away from our vicinity, at the same time
preparing to start for the interior. Under the direction of Kouaga, who
had already abandoned his European