26 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

Dakar

It must have been two days later that I woke to the
grating of iron against stone, and there was the Coast.
The word was already over-familiar. People said,
"Eldridge. Of course, he's an old Coaster," and
Eldridge, the middle-aged shipping agent, at the
beginning of every meal would say, "Chop, as we call
it on the Coast," or handing a plate of onions,
"Violets, we say on the Coast." One's pink gin was
called a Coaster. There was no other Coast but the
West Coast and this was it.

On the quay the Senegalese strolled up and down,
long white and blue robes sweeping up the dust blown
from the ridge of monkey-nuts twenty-five feet high.
The men walked hand-in-hand, laughing sleepily
together under the blinding vertical glare. Sometimes
they put their arms round each other's necks; they
seemed to like to touch each other, as if it made them
feel good to know the other man was there. It wasn't
love; it didn't mean anything we could understand.
Two of them went about all day without loosing
hold; they were there when the boat slid in beside
the monkey-nuts; they were there in the evening
when the loading was finished and the labourers
washed their hands and faces in the hot water flowing
from the ship's side; they hadn't done a stroke of
work themselves, only walked up and down touching
hands aad laughing at their own jokes; but it wasn't
love; it wasn't anything we could understand. They
gave to the blinding day, to the first sight of Africa,
a sense of warm and sleepy beauty, of enjoyment
divorced from activity and the weariness of willine.