84 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

the invoices and the soldiers spat and grinned and
passed remarks and I wiped off the sweat.

"This will take all day," the Customs man said.
"Everything here except the tin of Epsom salts, the
quinine and the iodine has got to pay duty." He
explained that he would let me go through to Bola-
hun if I left a deposit; any change would be sent
after me; he calculated that four pounds ten would
be sufficient guarantee. I extracted a bag of sixpenny-
bits from the money-box without disclosing the auto-
matic. But it wasn't quite the end. I had to pay two
cents each for the eight forms on which my dutiable
goods were to be set down in detail. I had to pay for
two Revenue stamps, and I had to sign my name at
the bottom of the eight blank sheets saying that the
items listed above were correct I was completely in
their power; they could fill up anything they liked on
the forms. The alternative was to stay where I was
for the night and have all my bags and bales opened.
As it was I didn't escape so easily. The next day
he sent a soldier over to Bolahun demanding another
six pounds ten, and when the soldier went back
empty-handed, he came himself, borne in a ham-
mock the long rough path from Foya with four
carriers and a couple of soldiers, a dirty white topee
on his head and a ragged cigarette in the corner of
his mouth. He swaggered across, the verandah, a little
sour, mean, avaricious figure, grinning and friendly
and furious and determined. He got his money,
drank two glasses of whisky, smoked two cigarettes;
thore was nothing one could do about it; it was im-
possible to bribe an official who probably took a lion's
,share anyway of what he exacted.