PART II

CHAPTER ONE

WESTERN LIBERIA
The Forest Edge

IT was midday. We followed the Customs man into a
thatched shelter, sat on high uncomfortable drawing-
room chairs and smoked: the little yellow man
sat opposite us in a hammock and smoked too,
swinging back and forth. I smiled at him and he
smiled back; they were surface smiles; there was no
friendliness anywhere. The man was thinking how
much he could exact, I with how little loss I could
escape. A woman brought in a child to see the white
people and it screamed and screamed uncontrollably.
The men of the Frontier Force lounged and spat in
the vertical sunrays, and one could almost see the
brown earth cracking. I began a second cigarette.

Then Laminah burst in, a small detonating bomb
of fury in the stillness, the doing nothing. He was
like a Pekinese who has been insulted by an Alsatian.
Somebody had told him he must pay duty on his
white barber's jacket which had a rubber lining. The
Customs officer surrendered the point with courtesy,
but it seemed to be the signal for the fun to start. I
produced my invoices, the German opened a small
suitcase and paid half a crown; the officer was in a
hurry to get on to bigger game, and the German*
passed out of the frontier station bobbing above ^fe
heads of his carriers. The officer settled to.wodb.jbii