and all Calabar came down to do them honor.
There was the commissioner's gig, and the marine captain's gig, and
the police captain's gig, and the gig from "Matilda's," the English
trading house, and one from the Dutch house and the French house,
and each gig was manned by black boys in beautiful uniforms and
fezzes, and each crew fought to tie up to the foot of the
accommodation ladder. It was as gay as a regatta. On the
quarter-deck the officers drank champagne, in the captain's cabin
Hughes treated the traders to beer, in the "square" the non-coms. of
the W.A.F.F.'s drank ale. The men who were going away on leave tried
not to look too happy, and those who were going back to the shore
drank deep and tried not to appear too carelessly gay. A billet on
the West Coast is regarded by the man who accepts it as a sort of
sporting proposition, as a game of three innings of nine months
each, during which he matches his health against the Coast. If he
lives he wins; if he dies the Coast wins.

After Calabar, at each port off which we anchored, at Ponny,
Focardos, Lagos, Accra, Cape Coast Castle, and Sekonni, it was
always the same. Always there came over the side the man going
"Home," the man who had fought with the Coast and won. He was as
excited, as jubilant as a prisoner sentenced to death who had
escaped his executioners. And always the heartiest in their
congratulations were the men who were left behind, his brother
officers, or his fellow traders, the men of the Sun Hat Brigade, in
their unofficial uniforms, in shirtwaists, broad belts from which
dangled keys and a whistle, beautifully polished tan boots, and with
a wand-like whip or stick of elephant hide. They swarmed the decks
and overwhelmed the escaping refugee with good wishes. He had
cheated their common enemy. By merely keeping alive he had achieved
a glorious victory. In their eyes he had performed a feat of
endurance like swimming the English Channel. They crowded to
congratulate him as people at the pit-mouth congratulate the
entombed miner, who, after many days of breathing noisome gases,
drinks the pure air. Even the black boys seem to feel the triumph
of the white master, and their paddles never flashed so bravely, and
their songs never rang so wildly, as when they were racing him away
from the brooding Coast with its poisonous vapors toward the big
white ship that meant health and home.

Although most of the ports we saw only from across a mile or two