48 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

who had promised months before to do his best, had
forgotten all about it. He was vague, charming, lost,
and a little drunk. He sat in the Grand bar drinking
whisky and bitters and talking about the Nazis and
the war; he began as a pacifist but after his third
drink he was ready to serve again at any moment;
his face was scarred from the last war. He hadn't any
idea of how to get boys for the journey, though he
agreed that it wouldn't be wise to take any of those
who stood all day at the entrance to the hotel offering
their services. He didn't know anybody who knew
anything at all about the Republic. No one in Sierra
Leone had ever crossed the border.

"Oh, Jimmie," they all said in Freetown, "poor dear
Jinunie/' when I said that Jimmie was finding me
boys. "Jimmie doesn't know a thing."

in the end I got the best boys in Freetown. My
head boy, Amedoo, was famous all the way up the
line, and Amedoo chose the second boy, Laminah,
and the old Mohammedan cook, Souri. And Jimmie
Daker was, in a way, responsible. If I had not been
to Jimmie's for a sun-downer, I wouldn't have met
Daddy, who had been twenty-five years in Freetown
and knew every native in the place. He was quite
drunk. He drove rapidly up and down the hills choos-
ing the worst roads, he nearly got arrested for taking
off a black policeman's hat, the atmosphere was rather
like Boat Race night in Piccadilly. "Everyone knows
Daddy," he said, trying to drive into Government
House at two in the morning (but the gates were
closed), reversing rapidly to the edge of a ditch, plung-
ing uphill again while the sentries stood at attention
and watched the car disappear with impassive faces,