THE DICTATOR OF GRAND BASSA	253
enemies in Monrovia, who were jealous of his
position, had pretended to believe in these atrocities,
and even his mother, back in America, had read
about them; but she knew him better, she'd dandled
him on her knee, and she didn't believe. Colonel
Davis said, "If you want to know the truth of that
story-	"
Apparently one evening he had heard children cry-
ing and had sent soldiers from the camp who found
two babies in the swamps. They had been hidden
there when Nimley's tribe took to the bush. The
next day he sent more soldiers to search the
neighbourhood, and they brought in four more
children. He was a mother to those children. He had
made the soldiers wash them, had given up his own
porridge and the last of his own vaseline; then next
day he had sent men to capture a few women to look
after them. These were the very children he had
been accused of having burnt alive.
His cook again appeared and said that chop was
getting cold. Davis snapped at him, but he had no
control over his servants. He was very smart, very
astute, but I think it was this which was wrong with
him. He came over to my verandah and drank
whisky and told us all about his first marriage to a
teetotaller and how he had cured her by guile of her
prejudice, and his servant kept on popping up at
intervals to remind him of chop, while Davis stub-
bornly sat on, just to show who was master.
It is the simplest explanation of the facts contained
in Blue Book, cmd. 4614: the woman just delivered
of twins shot in her bed and her children burnt;
children cut down with cutlasses; the heads aud