THE LAST LAP 275

to look back on Kpangblamai and Nicoboozu as
something gone out of my life for ever. Grand Bassa,
they said, was only eight hours away and Harlings-
ville six hours, but when I mentioned the lorry that
I hoped would meet us there, they had bad news.
There was only one car in Grand Bassa and that had
broken down some months before, and they doubted
whether it had been repaired. I wished then that I
had not told my servants and the carriers of the lorry.
The thought tha.t when I got them to Harlingsville
they would still be faced with another two hours' trek
worried me as much as the growing suspicion that
another eight hours of walking would be too much
for me.

We came out of the forest altogether a few hours
later on to a broad grassy path across long rolling
downs, which seemed to indicate the sea was near.
We had been in the forest now almost uninter-
ruptedly since the day we crossed the border on the
other side of Liberia. It was like breathing again
to leave it. At every crest now we hoped to see the
Atlantic. After lunch Tommie overtook us, tipsy and
singing some unintelligible song the carriers took up
and handed down their line till it faded over the
crests. That encouraged me, for if Harlingsville was
far off, our guide would have stayed behind to drink
and rob. More a$d more people came up the path
from the direction of the sea, and of each Tommie
asked if there was a car in Harlingsville, but they all
said there was no car. We passed an unfinished
concrete bridge marking where the road had once
reached, for this road had gone backward. Then a
few seedy houses appeared, definitely houses now and