POSTSCRIPT IN MONROVIA 281

in the sense that we have been taught to know home,
where we will soon forget the finer taste, the finer
pleasure, the finer terror on which we might have
built.

CHAPTER FIVE

POSTSCRIPT IN MONROVIA
A Boatload of Politicians

MY host woke me early to say that if I cared to catch
it a Liberian motor-launch was leaving that morning
for Monrovia. If I missed it, I might have to wait a
week for a Dutch cargo-boat, but he advised me all
the same to stay.

The boat was making its maiden voyage down the
coast from Cape Palmas to Monrovia. It cannot have
been more than thirty feet long, not that I was able
to pace it when we scrambled on board from the surf
boat, for it was packed—packed with black poli-
ticians. There were a hundred and fifty of them on
board, and if the owner of the boat had not been
with us we should not have been allowed to embark.
They shouted that there was no room, that we should
sink the boat, they implored the captain not to let us
on board, they were scared, for most of them had
never been at sea before and the previous evening
they had run on a rock and narrowly escaped off
Sinoe. The launch tilted with their fear, first one
way, then the other. But the owner got us on boaiji,

K*