BLACK MONTPARNASSE 185

was the second place where there was nothing to do
but get drunk. We looked across the wall with envy
towards the airy village. We were enclosed like lepers
with the dead rat and the cockchafers.

And again there was the inevitable palaver. That
night it was the water-carriers who caused the bother.
The water for our washing and for the filter had to
be carried up every day from the nearest stream in
basins. Kolieva headed a deputation. I couldn't
make out clearly what it was about; a tribal dispute
seemed to have split the carriers into hostile groups.
They complained, I think, that Amah, the second
headman, favoured the Bande carriers; they didn't do
their share of the water-carrying. They asked that
Amah should cease to be second headman. The fight
went on a long while and I was glad to be a little
drunk. But I slept badly; what Daddy had told me
in Sierra Leone came back now when my nerves were
tired with the marches and the squabble. I imagined
all night that leeches were falling on my face. It was
really the plaster ceiling of the pretentious rest-house
which the rats were demolishing. I was too drunk to
remember that the mosquito-net protected me.

Galaye

The smell of the dead rat, the cockroaches which
had got at our clothes and eaten them into holes,
drove us away early. I was anxious above everything
to get to Ganta. Mrs, Croup had spoken of it as three
days away, but the chief at Bamakama seemed to
think it was at least another three days off. It seemed
to recede rather than approach; nobody at Bamakanm