238 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

And when Victor Prosser angrily demanded why th<
school bell had not been rung, the young assistair
pointed to a rusty kitchen alarm clock on the desk
By his time it was only eight-forty-five. Victor Prossei
was embarrassed: we all compared watches: then he
rang the bell, put the clock to nine and led us up the
hill to the Paramount Chiefs cookhouse.

This impressive building was too large for me to
photograph: I couldn't get far enough from it. A
circular building with open sides, it had a huge cone
chimney of smoothly plaited reeds. Where it fitted
down over us like a fool's cap it must have been about
a hundred and fifty feet in diameter, and it narrowed
very gradually until through the top, more than the
height of Salisbury Cathedral nave, a handkerchief
of sky was visible. Here the town chief came and
dashed me a chicken and a hamper of rice—
embarrassingly, for the hamper was a man's load and
my cousin's hammock-men had had to be reduced to
three.

It was another five hours' march to Greh, by a track
of appalling monotony. I tried to think of my next
novel, but I was afraid to think of it for long, for then
there might be nothing to think about next day.
Greh, at the end of it all, proved an even more
primitive village than Baplai. It was impossible for us
to sleep in the huts, for their roofs were built so low
that we could not stand upright, and there was no
room for the poles of the mosquito-nets. So I ordered
our beds to be put up in the cookhouse in the centre
of the village, to Amedoo's distress; he had never
travelled before with white people outside Sierra
Leone, and we lost c?ste by exposing ourselves to the