310 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

miles up that stream still existed the exact spot, the
broken tree-trunk, the swarm of red ants where I had
waited for my lost companions. The half-built
Customs house, the waterside squalor of Kru Town,
the asphalt road up to grassy Broad Street, they
slipped behind with the sweep of the oars, but they
belonged to the same world as the huddled huts at
Duogobmai, the devil's servant fanning away the
storm, the old woman who had made lightning trail-
ing back to her prison with the rope round her waist.
They were all gathered together behind the white
line of the bar no European steamer ever crossed.

How happy I had thought I should be, while I was
struggling down to Grand Bassa, back in my world.
The bar took the prow and lifted it out of the water,
one wave curled beneath us and broke along the
beach of Kru Town, the second line broke above us,
stinging the face, washing along the boards of the
wide shallow boat, and there we were beyond, looking
back at the bar and behind it Africa. A mammy
chair came rattling down from the tarred English
side. Of course I was happy, I told myself, opening
the bathroom door, examining again a real water-
closet, studying the menu at lunch, while out of the
port-hole Cape Mount slid away, Liberia slid away,
with Abyssinia the only part of Africa where white
men do not rule. One had been scared and sick and
one was well again, in the world to which one be-
longed.

But what had astonished me about Africa was that
it had never been really strange. Gibraltar and
Tangier—those extended just parted hands—seemed
mojre than ever to represent an unnatural breach. The