THE HOME FROM HOME 69

and the German, who had brought carriers with him
from the Republic, at seven o'clock. It was a twenty-
mile march from the end of the road to the mission
on the other side of the frontier and I was anxious
to be there before dark. Nor had I any idea how long
we might be held up at the Customs. Only one lorry
turned up and it was an hour and a quarter late. The
German doubted whether my cousin and I would
reach Bolahun before night, for we had only one
hammock and his aristocratic mind recoiled from
the idea of walking with the men, from the stumbling
and scrambling in the dust, and the tiredness. He
himself had a chair slung on poles so that he could
sit upright above the carriers. But I had to think of
money; one couldn't have less than six carriers for
a four-man hammock and by walking from Biedu
I was saving seven and sixpence. We packed our-
selves on the one small lorry; three whites, three boys,
eleven carriers, and thirty loads, and drove unsteadily
down the rough road through the thin morning mist.
Great flattened thimbles of perpendicular rock rose
above the dripping palms; we drove between.

I was vexed by the delay at Kailahun. I had not
yet got accustomed to the idea that time, as a
measured and recorded period, had been left behind
on the coast. In the interior there was no such thing
as time; the best watches couldn't stand the climate.
Sooner or later they stopped. My own watch and my
cousin's were the first to go, and afterwards, one by
one, I used up the six cheap watches I had brought
with me for 'dashes' from Marks and Spencer's. Only
one reached the coast and it had long ceased to record
the 'real' time; when it got dark I simply put the