I JO JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

rushed like a whirlwind into the hut, lashing with his
stick at the legs of the few blacks who sat there with
me: he could never remember that he wasn't any
longer in the British Empire. He was worn out and
in a despairing rage because half the carriers, he said,
had stayed at the village the other side of the Loffa,
refusing to cross the bridge in the dark. There were
no beds, no mosquito nets, no lamps, no torches, no
food, and worst of all in the blasting heat of the hut,
no filter.

Old Souri, the cook, appeared in the doorway in
his black fez and his white robe which had been torn
in the forest. He had a chicken in one hand and a
bare knife in the other. He said, "Where de cook-
house? Where de cookhouse?" Nothing, no seedy
village, no ten hours' trek, could quench the old
man's ruling passion.

There was nothing to do but have our hammocks
slung and lie all night in them fully dressed and
wrapped in blankets to keep away mosquitoes. While
Amedoo and Amah prepared the hut we stumbled
out of the village to relieve ourselves. We had no
light, we lost our way in the coil of little huts, it was
a pitch-black night except for the quivering sparks of
fireflies. We struck endless matches, making water in
the dry pitted ground.

And suddenly I felt curiously happy and careless
and relieved. One couldn't, I was sure, get lower than
Duogobmai. I had been afraid of the primitive, had
wanted it broken gently, but here it came on us in a
breath, as we stumbled up through the dung and the
cramped and stinking huts to our lampless sleeping
j>lace among the rats. It was the worst one need fear,