rfi JOTONEY WITHOUT MAPS

Freetown; there wasn't a vulture to be seen, and sud-
denly, inexplicably, I felt happy in the rest-house, the
square squat bungalow built on cement piles to keep
out the white ants,, as the hurricane lamps were lit
and the remains of the tough, dry, tasteless coast
chicken were laid out There was a cockroach larger
than a black-beetle in the bathroom, there were no
mosquito rods with the camp beds, my medical outfit,
which had cost me four pounds ten at Burroughs
Wellcome, had been left behind, a native stood out-
side the rest-house all the evening complaining of
something with folded hands; but I was happy; it
was as if I had left something I distrusted behind.

On the lawn outside the headmaster's house, beside
a tree covered with wax blossoms like magnolia, we
sat and drank gin and lime-juice; it was warm and
quiet; they talked of the Republic. I carried an intro-
duction to C., a young Dutchman who was said to be
somewhere in the Republic looking for diamonds. The
traffic superintendent had heard of him; C. had
slipped over the frontier somewhere near Pendembu
and rumours had come back that he had found the
stones. He was alone, working for some small Dutch
company outside the great Trust. But the Trust, so
the story went, had been frightened by the rumours;
if diamonds were mined on a large scale in the
Republic, the Trust could no longer control the price,
They had sent spies over to trace C., slipped them
across from Sierra Leone, from French Guinea and
from the Ivory Coast; they had to discover the truth;
the price of diamonds and their own existence
depended on it. It was a good story to hear there in
the dark/near the borders of a country of which no