of
breakers, they always sent us something of interest. Sometimes all
the male passengers came on board drunk. With the miners of the Gold
Coast and the "Palm Oil Ruffians" it used to be a matter of
etiquette not to leave the Coast in any other condition. Not so to
celebrate your escape seemed ungenerous and ungrateful. At Sekondi
one of the miners from Ashanti was so completely drunk, that he was
swung over the side, tied up like a plum-pudding, in a bag.

When he emerged from the bag his expression of polite inquiry was
one with which all could sympathize. To lose consciousness on the
veranda of a cafe, and awake with a bump on the deck of a steamer
many miles at sea, must strengthen one's belief in magic carpets.

Another entertainment for the white passengers was when the boat
boys fought for the black passengers as they were lowered in the
mammy-chair. As a rule, in the boats from shore, there were twelve
boys to paddle and three or four extra men to handle and unhook the
mammy-chair and the luggage. While the boys with the paddles
manoeuvred to bring their boat next to the ship's side, the extra
boys tried to pull their rivals overboard, dragging their hands from
ropes and gunwales, and beating them with paddles. They did this
while every second the boat under them was spinning in the air or
diving ten feet into the hollow of the waves, and trying to smash
itself and every other boat into driftwood. From the deck the second
officer would swing a mammy-chair over the side with the idea of
dropping it into one of these boats. But before the chair could be
lowered, a rival boat would shove the first one away, and with a
third boat would be fighting for its place. Meanwhile, high above
the angry sea, the chair and its cargo of black women would be
twirling like a weathercock and banging against the ship's side. The
mammies were too terrified to scream, but the ship's officers
yelled and swore, the boat's crews shrieked, and the black babies
howled. Each baby was strapped between the shoulders of the mother.
A mammy-chair is like one of those two-seated swings in which people
sit facing one another. If to the shoulders of each person in the
swing was tied a baby, it is obvious that should the swing bump into
anything, the baby would get the worst of it. That is what happened
in the mammy-chair. Every time the chair spun around, the head of a
baby would come "crack!" against the ship's side. So the babies
howled, and