274 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

Harlingsville, five hours first to a Seventh Day
Adventist mission, where they wanted us .to spend the
night. But. the smash-and-grab raid was nearly over;
it was only later that I could separate the physical
tiredness which was caused by the long fast trek from
the actual circumstances of .the primitive life; I
thought then that it was the interior I was weary of,
when it was only the march, the forest, the in-
adequate resources of-my own brain. I wasn't going
to waste another day in the interior if we had to walk
the clock round to avoid it. As it might be a very
long trek I avoided using the hammock until the very
end, though if it hadn't been for the strain on the
carriers, there would have been an almost unalloyed
delight in the swinging motion and the long stare
upwards, the sight of the blue cracks moving through
the great fan of leaves between the tapering grey
boles, the sense of being carried south with no more
exertion, back to the life I began to think I cared for
more than I had known.

To my relief the Bassa men proved, as usual, to be
liars. The first of us reached the mission after only
three and a half hours. It was a Saturday and a bell
was ringing for church in a cluster of white buildings
on a hill-top. The missionary came down to the path
and brought us in, a German living there with his
wife, trying to convert the Bassa tribe to a belief in
the millennium and the sacred distinction between
the Sabbath and the Sunday. They fed us on real
German ginger cake and gave us iced grape juice to
drink, and talked about: wireless sets in throaty
English, and the .touch of iced drink on the lips was
lil^e the end of everything, so that already I began