BLACK   MONTPARNASSE	183
the huge trees. It was only at the watersides that
nature was ever beautiful: away from the rivers it
was too dry and shrivelled and lifeless for beauty.
But here there was faint movement, depth and
gleam: refreshment, too, in the thought that the
great slow stream was moving down to our destina-
tion, though by a quicker route, and would come out
two hundred miles or so farther, past the great central
forest, into the flats and mangrove swamps of
Monrovia.
A ferry took us to the other side, a raft built of the
trunks of trees lashed together and pulled across on
a creeper rope. Amedoo was with me and Amah and
about ten of the carriers; the others were somewhere
behind with my cousin. After half an hour I was
anxious, but my anxiety was small compared with
Amedoo's. He had been ordered in Sierra Leone by
Daddy to take care of us and never to show his face
again in Freetown without us, and the responsibility
weighed on him. He walked restlessly up and down
the high bank above the river, shouting, but the
sound died out a few yards away among the trees.
There was nothing we could do if they had lost their
way, and my cousin's lot really would have been
happier than mine. My cousin had Laminah and the
cook and Vande, the beds and mosquito-nets, and
most of the food and more than half the carriers. I
tried to make up my mind what I should do; it would
be no use chasing each other all over French Guinea.
I decided to go on, just as my cousin, I learnt later,
had decided to go back.
But at last when I was on the point of giving the
order to march, for fear we should be caught by*