370 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

natives were sitting with a half-caste. He was dressed
in duty pyjamas, he had a yellow face, a few decay-
ing teeth, a glass eye; he was one of the ugliest men
I met in Liberia, but there is no one there for whom
I feel now a greater affection. He gave me a chair,
he brought me the first fresh fruit I had seen for
weeks, large bitter oranges and limes; he arranged a
hut for me, and he expected no return.

He was an absurd and a heroic figure. He said to
me, "You are a missionary, of course?" and when I
said "No," he fixed me with his one eye, while the
other raked the glaring afternoon sky above the dirty
huts. He said, "I believe you to be a member of the
Royal Family." I asked him why he believed that
"Ah," he said, "it is my business. You see I am a
detective." But he had run completely out of paper;
there was none to be got nearer than the Coast; and
when I gave him a dozen pages out of my notebook,
he was embarrassingly grateful. I thought he was
going to weep from his single eye, and he disappeared
at once into his hut to write a report that a member
of the British Royal Family was wandering through
the interior of the Republic.

But I have said he was heroic. Like Mr. Nelson he
was a tax-gatherer. He belonged to the Coast, to the
cafes of Mr. Wordsworth's dreams, and here he was
stuck away in a tiny village of a strange tribe. like
Mr. Nelson he was unpaid, he had to live on what tie
natives gave him, but unlike Mr. Nelson he gav$
something in return. They trusted him and be
defended them as far as he could, with what vitality
was left in his fever-drained body, from the exactkw
oŁ the uniformed messengers who streamed back ari|