there a tragically old crone with witch-like white
hair.

The roads ran in every direction, and along them everywhere were figures
of black women shuffling with burdens on their heads, or groups of
girls, audaciously merry, most of them bonny, here and there almost a
beauty. There were churches, and dance-halls, and saloons--all
radiating, so to say, a prosperous blackness. It was from these
dance-halls that there came at night that droning and braying of
barbaric music, as from some mysterious "heart of darkness," as one
turned to sleep in one's civilised Nassau beds--a music that kept on and
on into the inner blackness of the night.

At first the effect of the whole scene was a little sinister, even a
little frightening. The strangeness of Africa, the African jungle, was
here, and one was a white man in it all alone among grinning savage
faces. But for the figures about one being clothed, the illusion had
been complete; but for that and the kind-hearted salutations from comely
white-turbaned mammies which soon sprang up about me, and the groups of
elfish children that laughingly blocked one's progress with
requests--not in any weird African dialect but in excellent
national-school English--for "a copper please."

This request was not above the maidenly dignity of quite big and buxom
lasses. One of these, a really superb young creature, not too liberally
clothed to rob one's eyes of her noble contours, caught my attention by
the singularity of something she carried. It was an enormous axe, the
shining blade balanced easily on her head, and the handle jutting out
horizontally like some savage head-dress. She looked like a beautiful
young headswoman. Even she asked for "a copper, please," but with a
saucy coquetry befitting her adolescence.

"A big girl like you too!" I ventured. She gave a fine savage laugh,
without in the least jeopardising the balance of the axe.

"I'll give you one if you'll tell me where the 'King' lives," said I.

"Ole King Coffee?" she asked, and then fell into a very agony of negro
laughter. The poor old king was evidently the best of all possible jokes
to this irreverent young beauty. Then, recovering, she put her finger to
her lips, suggesting silence, and said:

"Come along, I'll show you!"

And, walking by my side, lithe as a young animal, evidently without
giving a thought to her gleaming headdress, she had soon brought me to a
cabin much like the rest, though perhaps a little poore