258 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

Conversation was halting: the weather, devils and
secret societies, the small talk of Liberia. Colonel
Davis was a firm believer in the power of the light-
ning societies. He had visited towns where the
members had performed in his honour. They would
tell him that lightning would be made at a certain
hour, and at that hour out of a cloudless sky along
all the hills for miles around it would begin to play.
Mr. Justice Page capped the story with a few legal
decisions of his own on the subject of lightning-
makers, but Colonel Davis was determined to raise
the conversation to a high social level: to food. He
had toured Europe with Mr. King and he remem-
bered very well the caviare.

Colonel Davis explained to the dark blank faces,
"Caviare is the black eggs of little fishes." He turned
to me, "Of course, in England now, you no longer
get the Russian cigarette." I said I really didn't
know: I thought Fd seen them in tobacconists'.
"Not real ones," Colonel Davis said, "they are very
rare indeed. A season or two ago in Monrovia they
formed a course in themselves at dinner parties/'
"Where did the course come?" I asked.
"After the fish and before the salad," Colonel Davis
said, while the Commissioner from Grand Bassa learn
forward and drank in every syllable describing the
gilded life of the capital. 'The lights were lowered/'
he paused impressively, "and one cigarette would be
served to each guest." The judge nodded; he came?
from Monrovia as well.

I remember saying to Colonel Davis how surprise!;
T was not to have seen a single mosquito. He, to^|
he said, had not seen one since the last rains; he w$i