A couple of days after our excursion to Anyáko I received a letter by the land post from Captain Bithery. It was dated from Axím on the Gold Coast, and in it, after giving me sundry items of news concerning the brig and her crew, the Captain went on to say that he proposed to drop down to the leeward coast in about a fortnight to ship some produce that he hoped to obtain. This produce, consisting chiefly of palm oil, kernels and copra, was to be collected for him by a certain Csar Olympio—a Portuguese mulatto who lived at the village of Adena or Elmina Chica, a beach village some twelve miles to leeward—i.e. to the east—of Quittáh; and he proposed that I should proceed to Adena to conduct the purchase and superintend the storage of the produce, leaving my store in Vanderpuye's charge.
On receiving these instructions I made the necessary arrangements with Pereira, and the same afternoon set out for Adena in a spare hammock which he lent me and which was carried on the heads of four of our labourers.
This was my first experience of this mode of travelling, and very pleasant and even luxurious I found it to recline at full length in the springy, swaying hammock as the barefooted carriers trudged over the soft sand. A canopy of painted canvas protected me from the sun during the daylight and from the dew when the night closed in, and by peering underneath it I could look out at the groves of pattering cocoa-nut palms on the one side, and on the other at the ocean which surged up almost at our feet.
It was about eight o'clock and bright moonlight when the hammock drew up outside the compound of Olympio's house, and as I scrambled out on to my feet I was saluted by a little yellow-faced man with bright, beady, black eyes and a most persuasive and conciliatory smile.
"You are Mr. Olympio?" I said as I shook his hand.
"Quite right," he replied in a singularly soft and musical voice, adding, "I bid you welcome to Adena. Will you please to come in?"
I followed him into the house, a mud-built thatched cottage of three rooms, and immediately became aware of an aromatic and savoury odour, and perceived with great content that preparations—of a somewhat primitive nature indeed—had been made for a meal.
I was not the only guest, it appeared, for, as I entered, a native in European dress—what is locally known as a "scholar man"—rose to greet me. He was the very antithesis of Olympio—big, burly, black as the ace of spades, and full of the boisterous humour and high spirits of the typical African; and as he gripped me by the hand and bid me welcome to Adena his joy overflowed in little gurgles of laughter.
"Glad to see you, Mr. Englefield," he said in a deep buzzing bass. "I hear your name plenty time but never see you. Now I see you very fine gentleman. Ha! ha! ha!" Here he leered at Olympio, who keckled softly and rubbed his hands.
"Mr. Englefield smell de palaver sauce, hey! Olympio?" continued my new friend, whose name, by the way, was David Annan. "You like dis country chop, sah?"
I replied that I had very little acquaintance with African cookery.
"Aha! no! You no get fine country wife like Olympio to make you palaver sauce. Dis yer Olympio he sabby what be good. He sabby fine chop, fine liquor, fine girl. He very bad man, sah, ha! ha!"
He laughed uproariously, and certainly the picture of the little wizened mulatto in the character of a bon vivant and lady-killer was not without its comic side. But these flights of wit were cut short by the appearance of a handsome, light-coloured Fanti woman who carried a deep, black clay dish, and was followed by a procession of small girls and boys each bearing some adjunct to the feast, and soon the little table, with its red and yellow-striped cloth, groaned under a burden of delicacies. The black dish was filled with a gorgeous orange-coloured palm oil stew, while smaller but similar receptacles exhibited such dainties as kiki, or okro stew, rolls of fufu, looking like gelatinous suet puddings, stuffed egg-fruit, large red capsicums and piles of green and red chillis.
That dinner was a series of surprises, of which I experienced the first when I unguardedly swallowed a spoonful of the orange-red "palaver sauce" and was instantly reduced to tears and suffocation. But the most surprising thing of all was the behaviour of Mr. David Annan. He commenced the meal by popping into his mouth and calmly masticating a large scarlet capsicum. He next pinched off a lump of fufu and, indenting it with his thumb, fashioned it into a kind of cup which he filled with the peppery stew and solemnly bolted with closed eyes like a toad swallowing a caterpillar. Finally, he poured out half a tumblerful of Angostura bitters and drained it at a draught. After this my capacity for astonishment was exhausted, and if he had proceeded to quench his thirst with the contents of the paraffin lamp and to swallow the forks it would have seemed quite in character. But he did neither of these things, and the meal dragged on to the end with no further diversion from my sufferings.
Shortly after dinner Mr. Annan took his leave, earnestly beseeching me to keep an eye on Olympio and endeavour to restrain him from the wild excesses into which it was his habit to plunge, and the little mulatto and I then settled down to pass the evening together.
The proceedings were not as boisterous as Annan's warning might have led one to expect, for Olympio was a shy and silent man, and, moreover, unaccustomed to the society of Europeans; so we sat at opposite ends of the table, with a calabash full of chopped tobacco-leaf between us, and engaged in conversation which was so spasmodic and one-sided that it gradually "dwindled away into silence." Then we sat speechless for some time, during which Olympio observed me continuously, and whenever he caught my eye chuckled softly and rubbed his hands, until I became possessed with an insane desire to empty the tobacco-leaf over him and bonnet him with the calabash.
But he saved me from this outrage by retiring to dive into a cupboard, whence he returned carrying a biscuit tin and a weather-beaten musical-box.
"You are perhaps fond of music, Mr. Englefield?"
"Very," I replied, with an apprehensive glance at the musical-box.
"So am I," said Olympio, and he proceeded to wind up the instrument; and having balanced it upside down and cornerwise in the biscuit tin—the only position in which it would consent to go—he "gave it its head."
It had but one tune, but of that it made the most, repeating it in every variety of time; commencing with obscene hilarity, retarding to funereal slowness and stopping in the most unexpected places.
I felt the old insane impulse reviving, and as I had no wish to see my host fly from the room with his head through his own calabash, I brought the entertainment to a close.
"I think, if you will excuse me, Mr. Olympio, I should like to turn in. The hammock journey has rather tired me."
"I shall be most delighted, sir," replied Olympio, with less politeness and more truth than he supposed. "I will show you your room in a moment. Hi! Kwaku! why you no bring Mr. Englefield his candle?"
The latter question was bawled through the open door into the darkness of the back compound, from which presently emerged a small boy bearing a paraffin lamp, which he shaded skilfully from the strong sea breeze. Olympio took the lamp and led the way into my bedroom, which opened out of the room in which we had been sitting. He held the lamp above his head as we entered, and looked round the room with evident pride in the resources of civilisation that it exhibited. It was indeed far beyond my expectations, and I hastened to say so, for Adena was but a remote native hamlet and little could be expected there but the ordinary accommodation of a native house. Yet there was a good iron bedstead with clean white sheets and a serviceable mosquito curtain, a washstand with a veritable china basin, and a dressing-table fitted with a looking-glass fully nine inches square. But the most surprising and unexpected object in the room was a small but massive oak chest of drawers with a secretary top, which I at once perceived, both from its quaint and antique design and the dark colour of the wood, must be of considerable age.
"That is a fine piece of furniture, Mr. Olympio," I remarked. "There are not many like it in Africa, I expect."
"No," he replied, setting the lamp on it and passing his hand affectionately over its polished surface. "I have never seen one like it even in the castle at Elmina. It is very old. My grandfather had it in his house at Adáffia when my father was a child, I have heard him say."
"Did he bring it out from Portugal with him?"
"Oh, no. It came from a ship that broke up on the beach at Adáffia many, many years ago. I have heard that she was English."
"You don't know her name, then?"
"No. It was long, long time ago—before my grandfather's time, I think. I have told Kwaku to put your things in the drawers. I thought you would like it because the chest is an English chest. I don't give it to the Germans who come here."
He smiled shyly and backed towards the door, and when I had thanked him—which I did warmly—for this graceful little act of courtesy, he wished me "good-night" and went away much gratified.
Left to myself I made leisurely preparations for bed, ruminating, as I undressed and washed, upon the strange fortunes of the old ship's chest, speculating upon its history, upon the men who had fashioned it, on the old-time skipper who had sat before it to write his old-world letters, and on the bills of lading, charter-parties, and other sea documents that had once reposed in its pigeon-holes and drawers.
When I had got into my pyjamas I lit a pipe—not of Olympio's tobacco—and taking down the lamp made a more thorough examination of the chest. Its nautical character was now evident, for on each side, near the bottom, was a perforated chock through which a lanyard had been passed to secure it to a ring-bolt in the deck of the cabin. The ornamentation, too, savoured of the sea, for the drawers were enriched by rude shallow carvings of ropes in festoons, coils and hitches, and each corner terminated above in a kind of diminutive figure-head representing a buxom, blowsy sea-maiden with a very full bust and a dolphin's tail. The handles of the drawers were of hippo ivory, carved with a knife and now cracked and yellow with age, and the flap that let down to form the writing-table had once been decorated with a painted design, but this was now obliterated.
I drew out the sliding supports and let down the flap, intending to stow away my stationery in the upper part conveniently for writing. Here I found a row of drawers, and one of pigeon-holes above them, while the centre was occupied by a little tabernacle-like cupboard, the door of which was decorated with a roughly executed painting, very yellow and faded, of a sea-maiden, similar to those carved on the corners. When I opened this door there was revealed a set of four very small drawers, all of which were empty; and I noticed, when I pulled out one, that it was only half the length of the drawers below the pigeon-holes. Evidently this little nest of drawers masked some secret repository—if that could be described as "secret" which was so artlessly concealed. Now, there is something highly stimulating to curiosity in the idea of a secret drawer or cupboard, no matter how transparent the secrecy may be, and I had no sooner ascertained the existence of this hiding-place than I was all agog to lay bare its secret.
First I drew the drawers right out and felt at the back, thinking there might be a cavity there; but the back of the drawer-case was quite unyielding. Then I noticed that the nest which held the drawers was a separate and independent structure let into the row of pigeon-holes, and not continuous with them; so I took hold of one of the partitions between the drawer spaces and gave a gentle pull, when, sure enough, the whole nest came sliding forward, and I lifted it bodily out of the cavity in which it fitted.
The back of the nest was formed by a panel, which I could see slid in grooves, and I was about to slide it up when I suddenly bethought me that I was perhaps invading the holy of holies of my too-confiding host, who might quite conceivably make the secret drawers behind the panel the repository of his most treasured possessions. However, I considered that, even if it were so, I had no intention of abstracting anything, while most likely the drawers were empty, so banishing my scruples I boldly slid up the panel.
There were no drawers inside, but in place of them a flat copper box which stood upright in the cavity and fitted it exactly. The green, encrusted condition of this box seemed to indicate that it was not often taken out, and when I drew it forth and tried to open it, the close-fitting lid was jammed to so tightly that I had to prise it open with my knife, when I found that it had an air-tight flange like the lid of a snuff box. Inside the box, and exactly fitting it, was a small folio volume bound in parchment. This I supposed to be Olympio's book of accounts, but I nevertheless shook it out of its case and turned back the cover, when I perceived a pale and faded inscription on the fly leaf in an odd, crabbed handwriting, but yet adorned with several expert flourishes.
This was the inscription: "The Journall of Barnabas Hogg, Master of the ship Mermaid, of Bristol City. 1641-16—" The second date was not filled in, and I surmised that the journal and its writer had together come to an untimely end in the roaring surf of Adáffia beach. This was rendered more probable by the fact that the book had remained in its hiding-place, for, had the Captain survived he would presumably have taken his journal with him: a view which received confirmation when I turned up the last entry, which was near the end of the volume, and read:
"16 June (1643). We are still at anchor off Adáffia, but shall not remain here since there seemeth to be little trade with this wild and turbulent people who have brought us but a few elephant's teeth (and those very small and poor) and some teeth of river horses. Moreover the sudden storms of this season of the year do make this roadstead most perilous for ships to anchor in."
That was the end of the journal. Doubtless on the day following, the very danger that the Captain had foreseen overtook the ship, and as for poor Master Barnabas himself and his hearts of oak, they all probably perished in the surf or fell victims to the "wild and turbulent" people of the coast villages.
There was something very solemn in this unexpected meeting with the quaint and musty little volume. On that June evening, more than two centuries ago, the final entry had been written and the book put away by the methodical Master of the good ship Mermaid. And there it had in all probability remained, unseen by human eye, its very existence forgotten, while generation after generation was born and passed away, while dynasties rose, flourished and decayed. As I turned over its yellow leaves covered with faded writing I felt like one holding converse with the dead (as indeed I was), and so fell into a train of meditation from which I was at length aroused by the little American clock in the sitting-room banging out with blatant modernity the hour of midnight. So I rose, knocked out my pipe, replaced and closed up the secret cupboard, and, having deposited the journal in my dispatch box, turned into bed.
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