In the Bight of Benin

Front matter

The Author wishes to take this opportunity of thanking, for their courtesy, the Editors of "The Idler," "Black and White," "In Town," "To- Day," and "The Sun," in -whose Journals these stories of thpJ&est~£oast have found a s<&Vx<"V$jtSx Place. Æ&MMk BY A. J. DAWSON AUTHOR OP "MERE SENTIMM1T," ETC. LONDON LAWRENCE AND BULLEN, Ltd. 16 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. To a beautiful woman, some happy pickaninnies, several '" while" negroes, and a few interesting blackguards, now resident in West Africa; the Author sends greetings, and — some reminiscences. London, February t&fl. CONTENTS IN THE BIGHT OF BENIN— FASE I. TWO MEN IN THE STREET .... 3 II. PLAYING AGAINST ODDS . . . .16 III. SHARP PLAY . . . . .26 IV. REVOKING . . . . . • • 33 V. A POOR DEAL 43 VI. THE ACE OF TRUMPS ..... 48 VII.

BLUFF ....... 60 VIII. PLAYING THE KING . . . . -65 IX. FOUL PLAY ON A HEART LEAD . . -73 X. MARKING THE CARDS ..... 79 XI. THROWN AWAY 86 XII. SHOWING HANDS 97 XIIL A TEST HAND IO3 XIV. THE LAST THROW . . . . . IIO XV. WINNINGS 121 CONTENTS PAGE MAM'ZELLE '27 DAISY TEMPEST : A COLOUR STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE '55 NOT MADE IN HEAVEN 175 THE EDUCATION OF A RIVER GIRL . . . 199 THE CONVERSION OF CHIEF ABEOKUTA . . 223 AB SHEYBAN AND THE PARTNERS . . -235 A " There's danger even where fish are caught To those who a wetting fear ; For what's worth having must aye be bought, And sport's like life and life's like sport — It ain't all skittles and beer." — Adam Lindsay Gordon.

Chapter I Two Men In The Street

It is always hard to say how a row begins in Las Palmas. And, anyway, the Englishman was far too delighted and grateful to find that there was really a row to care one grain of picadura how it came about. He could see that all the orthodox component parts of a row royal were there, and he was not the man to cause unnecessary delays by pushing investigations. A half-caste Las Palmas woman was in the middle of the crowd, and her white cotton gar ments were scanty. IN THK BIGHT <>E BENIN 4 Glaring at her, over the heads of half-a-dozen yellow-skinned, black -eyed island-men, each of whom seemed to have gripped some portion of his wiry frame, was a tall, well-made man, who looked like a Southerner and was dressed like an Englishman. His skin was fair enough to be quite in keeping with his clothes of Northern cut and make.

But his expletives, after one hurried English oath, were richly redolent of the sunny Mediterranean. Three knives were drawn ; spectators at the little green jalousies overhead shouted their en thusiastic anticipation of a fitting finale ; and the tall man was forced down at last on to his knees, hissing and gasping with fury. It was just at that moment that the English man appeared at the corner of the street — a four-foot wide thoroughfare, winding between high walls of glistening whiteness ;— and in an other instant, he was in the thick of the black and yellow tangle round the individual whose oaths smacked of garlic. One minute of exhilarating disentanglement, and then " Time ! " seemed to have been called and tacitly responded to by all concerned. The tall man sat, with legs outstretched, in the soft, red dust ; the Englishman stood by his side panting ; and about them, in a semicircle, half-a-dozen islanders wiped their yellow faces and drew long breaths before launching into descriptive and explanatory blasphemy.

The Englishman understood not a word of the vernacular, or Spanish either ; and he wore the expression of one who, whilst patient and pre pared to admire anything novel in vituperation, was yet anxious to proceed with more serious business, if anything in that way were forth coming. Mere language having continued for some time, he bent down over the man he had res cued, and said — " Look here ; I don't know who you are, but you are dressed like an Englishman, and — if I leave you with these friends of yours there may be trouble. Hadn't you better get up and come and have a drink somewhere ? " " Tste" ! you are a good sort, and — cool. Do you know what the row is about ? " The Englishman looked at one of the islanders, who, jabbering in great excitement, was advanc ing towards him. " I can hear you just as well, my friend, and smell you quite plainly enough, at a distance."

And he gave the islander a good-humoured shove that sent him reeling towards his friends, and jabbering more incoherently than before. " You are not afraid of the knife ? " muttered the man in the dust admiringly. The Englishman looked down sharply, and with a little contempt in his blue eyes. " Why, no ! Are you ? But see here, we'd better go and have that drink before these gentlemen be come apoplectic or go and fetch their relations." So the tall man raised himself from the ground and shook the red dust from his tail-coat. The island-men advanced a step, and raised their respective voices by an octave. " You're a bit shaken up, I fancy," said the Englishman to the other. " Walk on ahead by the corner I came round, and I'll follow and talk to our friends." The tall man made a vesture which micht have meant " Thank you ; " or possibly, " What a fool you are !

" Then he turned and walked towards the corner of the street, the Englishman stepping back wards after him, like the leader of a Salvation Army band, and muttering playful warnings to the half-caste Spaniards, who followed him like a flock of hungry, but frightened wolves. Arrived at the arched corner of the street, the Englishman suddenly became serious, and for the first time since his appearance on the scene, drew a revolver from his hip pocket. " Don't come any farther, gentlemen, or I shall have to shoot." There was no mistaking the gesture, though the words were Greek to the island-men. They did not venture past the corner, but stood in the archway pouring musical curses after the two men, who were slowly walking towards where the narrow street widened into a road outside the cathedral of Las Palmas.

The Englishman did not mention that his revolver was not loaded, but quietly replaced that weapon in his hip pocket as he rejoined his friend on the paved square before the cathedral. " Where do you drink at this time in the evening % " he asked ; as they passed a gorgeously uniformed gendarme, sleeping peacefully in the moonlight, with his sabre propped against his knees. " I'll take you to a little wine-shop, where we can stay as long as we like ; and if you'll let me I'll reckon you my guest for to-night, anyhow." The tall man had spruced up a good deal in the walk clown the hill from the cathedral. " Let me introduce myself," he continued, picking a big, gilt-edged card out of his pocket book and handing it to the Englishman. " I'm proud to meet a man who can play with six half-castes at one time."

" John Albert Menuel " was the name on the gilt-edged card ; and as the Englishman looked at it in the light of one of the lamps on the little bridge in the centre of the town, he said quietly — " Thank you. My name is Wray." Then the two men went into a queer, shadowy little wine-shop at the back of the Hotel du Quatro Naciones, and John Albert Menuel led the way up a railed ladder to a kind of loft, where a number of island men and women sat at little tables, drinking thin wine and playing dominoes. Menuel ordered a flask of the slate-blue wine, and Wray drank with him, for all the world as though he liked it. He had spent most of his life in different colonies and abroad ; and Menuel, though it was his habit to give London the credit of being his birthplace, was in reality a Maltese Jew, and could drink anything that was liquid.

" Did you wonder how I came to be rowing with an island woman ? " he asked, as he offered a cigarette to his new friend. " No," answered the Englishman. " Not much. You see, I didn't arrive in good time at all, and — I'm not great on wondering, any how." Menuel smiled. He admired this kind of man immensely, and himself assumed a languid tone in unconscious imitation of the English man's genuine indifference. " That woman had arrived somehow at the conclusion that I was her long-lost husband. At least, I fancy so, since she accused me of being the father of her brats. I explained that marriage was not so much in my line as trading, and that I was willing to sell her anything under heaven, but was not buying picaninnies, not at present. Then she began to squall, and the street turned out. They didn't care to understand, and were just getting a thought too many for me — I hadn't a knife about me — when you arrived and scattered them.

I'm not a man to fuss round much, Mister — Wray ; but I'm very grateful, and I don't forget a thing like that, — not in one evening." " I'm sure it's very kind of you to say so, but, Lord ! the gratitude's all on my side. The thing did me a world of good, and if they'd only been a couple fewer, and didn't jaw so much, I should have enjoyed another round immensely." So the two men talked, and Wray became more interested in the life of the man he had saved, as Menuel allowed his natural pictur esqueness to over-ride his rendering of what he thought a London business-man's address should be. Then, when the wine was finished, Menuel suggested a move towards quarters for the night. " It's very good of you to want to put me up," said Wray ; " but I expect you're living somewhere here, and it will be more convenient for you to go alone.

Now, I'm just stopping for a few days at the Santa Madrono, and have no one's convenience to study. I think I'll go out there and turn in ; — Thanks all the same for your offer — and I've no doubt I shall have the pleasure of seeing you about the town before I go away." " I'm all alone, too," said Menuel, " and am only staying a few days in the island on my way to Africa. The Santa Madrono's a long way out. Come with me to the Quatro Naciones, where I'm staying, and let's have a yarn there." It was the nature of the Englishman to "go along " at all times. So he strolled quietly across the moonlit square to the Hotel du Quatro Naciones, and sat down on the verandah while Menuel tugged at the door-bell. " 'Iste" ! They don't sleep here ; they die when they lie down," said Menuel, as the big bell jangled for the fifth time without an answer.

" Let's go round to the back and reconnoitre." In the garden at the back of the hotel they found a big wooden grating standing open, and walking down the steps under this, they reached a great rambling cellar, full of stores and empty cases. From this the ascent of a rickety ladder brought them through a trap-door into the kitchen of the establishment. There they lit a candle of prodigious size which stood on the table, and, at Menuel's suggestion, they supped royally on Gruyere cheese, white rolls, and stewed fruit, these being the commodities nearest to hand. Menuel, whose habits were of the South, took all this as a matter of course ; and at that the Englishman was a good deal amused. Then they walked quietly along the cool, dark cor ridors of the place, across the central courtyard, where one or two cherub-faced Canary Island boys lay sleeping amongst the dogs and cala bashes ; and up a flight of winding stairs to Menuel's room, which boasted a fine broad couch, as well as a bed, hidden under a mosquito bar.

" May I ask questions ? " said the tall man, when they had arrayed themselves in pyjamas, and had sat down to smoke. " Go ahead," replied the other at the end of a big, cool puff of picadura smoke. " How long are you staying in the island ? " " Haven't the faintest notion ! " " What are your intended movements after leaving here ? " " Haven't got any ! " " Have you no business or private ties in any particular place ? " "Not a sign ofa tie !" "You rather puzzle me. What are your wishes — I mean, what part of the game are you playing ; or, would you rather say nothing of yourself?" '"' Well, you see, I am tired of the game all round, and I'm now — well, I suppose I'm playing for a finish. I spent a good bit of my time in working for a certain end — that was in the colonies. Then I came home, and the end wasn't there, that's all !

Now I'm sick of the game, and — perhaps that's why I didn't mind your friends' knives." Menuel smoked for some time in silence, and now and again he glanced at the Englishman, who lay on a rug near the window, and was about as fine a looking man as Menuel had ever seen. " Yet there must be some hands in the game you have never played," said the tall man thoughtfully. " A good many, but you see I'm full of the game itself!" Wray smiled, and his smile was rather sad. " Look here, my friend," said Menuel, rising to his feet, and tossing away the end of his cigarette. " Will you play a hand with me before you throw your cards down ? A man can always leave the table when he likes, but he can't come back if he wants to ever so." Then, without waiting for a reply, the tall man began to talk ; moving quickly about the room as he spoke, and saying many things that need not be put down here.

" Tste" ! One's last throw is lucky sometimes. I am a trader, a man that sells anything that people will buy for more than I need pay for it. I am tired of the little cutting and scraping for a living with the crowd up yonder." Per haps Menuel's nod included Europe, or it might only have meant England. " I have looked for a place where buyers should be many and sellers few. And now I am going there. I'm going where thousands of niggers work and sell their products for tobacco and buttons and Hamburg gin and rags from Manchester. They buy, you may say, from one big family, who rules their coast and grows very rich on their produce. I know it, and I'm going there to do a little bit of the buying and selling. There is plenty of room in that part of Africa, and the risk is not mine, because I go to represent mer chants in London.

I take their goods with me. They will send me more, and I shall sell for them TWO MEN IN TFIE STREET 15 and buy for them, and — for myself, a little, you understand! Now I have very little capital, and I am only one man. One man may be forced on his knees, you see, and if knives are used — But you follow me ! Suppose I have a little more capital, and the help of a man who, like me, is making a last throw — who is not afraid ; and — Tste", there is fortune that way ! What do you say, my friend ? Have you any capital ? " Wray was sitting up now, with one hand on the ledge of the window. " I've something be tween three and four hundred," he said. Menuel's eyes flashed in the light of his glowing cigarette. " And I have two hundred," he said ; " and all my stock of guns and gin and coloured cloths, and a free hand to establish agencies.

See here, my friend, I can't make a fuss about what I feel, but I start in your debt for to night's affair, and all I can say is, I shan't forget it. Let us two play a final hand together, and fight the thing out to a finish. Will you do it ?" " By the Lord, Menuel, I will ; and here's my hand on it ! " Then the two men went to sleep, just as the sky was turning slaty-blue, like the wine in the little cabin below the bridge.

Chapter II Playing Against Odds

Menuel, the trader, found very little of that lano-uid indifference which he had first noticed in his new friend, in the methods of that gentle man when his mind was fixed upon a course of action. Richard Wray was too young a man, and too clean run, to be soured right through by the series of disappointments which the last year or so of his life had brought him. But, he was alone in the world ; he felt his loneliness ; and, as he said, he was " tired of the game itself." The vivacity and energy of the trader Menuel, and the spice of risk and adventure in his schemes, together formed exactly the kind of tonic Wray stood most in need of. And the man who, a few days after the night in the Hotel de Quatro Naciones, stood by Menuel's side on the poop of a trading steamer bound down the coast of the Dark Continent, was even more full of fight than he had been under the stimulating influence of the black and yellow tangle in which they originally found each other.

"So it's fixed that we make our first stand at Carra Adoa, since this packet doesn't touch Bathurst. And I'm not sure but what Carra's the best start, anyhow. We can always break ground, either together or separately, when once we're established." So spoke the man of Maltese extraction. And Wray nodded, for Carra Adoa or Fernando Po were all one to him, " the Coast " being a part of the world he had neither visited nor heard much of. " How is it you know so much of these places," he asked, " since you have never been to the Coast before ? " "Ah, my friend, you have heard me talk of Australia, yet I have never seen that beautiful country. Then in this case, I have studied the locale, of course, and have done business with people who know the Coast so well as to have made very decent incomes out of it for many years.

Also I know the nig— coloured gentle man — I beg pardon — and I know Africa." B Menuel did more than inspire confidence. He created it, and suckled it into maturity, by never appearing at a loss, unless his hand were so very strong as to make doubt impossible. He never said " I think," unless the person to whom he spoke knew that he knew. "And how shall we commence operations in Carra Adoa ? " asked Wray. " That's all cut and dried to our hands," replied the tall man. " I have two introduc tions to wealthy natives ; and I'm bringing with me goods actually ordered by one of the biggest chiefs in that part of the Coast. That ought to start us fairly well, eh ? " So Wray told himself that he and his partner between them held strong cards, and stood well to sweep the board on their last throw7.

A wTeek passed quickly, and then the little steamer dropped anchor one morning opposite the coal wharf at Carra Adoa, just as the sun was rising over the hills behind the town. " Good morning, Mistah Menuel, sah ! Nevah speck' see yew when I come 'board 'is morning. Yew goin' right on to Cape Coas', sah ? " It was a very intensely coloured gentleman who spoke, and the brilliant pattern of the pyjama trousers he wore was admirably set off by the sheen of his new black coat. Menuel and Wray were leaning over the ship's rail together, and the darkey had just clambered up the gangway. " Ah, good morning, Mr. Johnson ! " said Menuel. " No, I'm coming ashore to stay right here in this beautiful town of yours." " Gentleman seems to know you," said Wray. " Yes," replied the tall man, smiling blandly ; " I met him buying goods in London last year."

A little later on Menuel and Wray chartered a dinghy, and started for the shore, having arranged to send a small lighter out for their goods before the ship sailed that evening. On arriving at the crazy old landing-stage in front of the English church, the two were taken in hand by a preternaturally solemn boy, who gave his name as " Darkey's delight-cum 'appy-day," and was anxious to welcome the strangers to Africa by acting as their guide and escort. " No, no, sonny ; we no want guide ! " Then Menuel paused a moment. " Well, I don't know," he muttered. " Yes, all right, Darkey. Go ahead. Take us to Mister Adul's ! You sabe Mister Adul, eh ? " " 'Ess, sah ! Me sabe ebley place on de Coast. Me best boy on de Coast. 'Dese udder nigger boys 'dey no sabe not at all — foolish like evley thing."

And with a scornful wave of his little black hand, Darkey designated a group of laughing urchins sprawling on the water-washed steps of the landing ; who, whilst all too lazy to interfere with his capture of the white men, yet shouted out their claim to superiority as guides, and expressed good-humoured pity for the benighted foreigners. " Dat boy he be no good, sah ! Me — Joolyer Cæsar — de bes' boy ! No, no ! No beleeve 'im, sah. 'E be fool boy ! no get no sense. Me — Ab' ram Link'en — de bes' boy ! Yah ! Ho, o — oh ! " and they rolled over each other in pursuit of a banana, each boy choking almost with animal happiness. The two traders had several interviews that morning with different business-men of colour and weight in the town ; and the white man who represented the big firm there, seemed disposed to be very friendly.

" Were you on the Coast some five or six years ago, Mr. Menuel?" he asked, as the two were leaving him. " No, this is my first glimpse of it," replied Menuel. " Ah, I merely asked because I heard some thing this morning of the arrival of a trader who was in Cape Coast a few years back, and whom several of the natives wanted to see. I've only been here a year myself." " No, I'm quite a raw beginner," said Menuel modestly ; " but hope to be something more by and-by." And so they parted ; and the white representative of the large firm stood in the doorway of his store, watching his visitors walk slowly down the white, uneven road, their big umbrellas resting on their shoulders. " H'rnp," he muttered, turning into his shop to escape the dazzling sunlight, " I'm inclined to think something must be done for you gentle men at once.

Koora ! " He turned to a native boy at the counter. " Run up to the court, and ask if Mr. Johnson got what he wanted. Sabe — quick now ! " Menuel and Wray walked slowly to the landing-stage in front of the church. Every one had been civil ; and the little naked children, who rolled about in the dust all day, had been effusive. Every one, too, had said that no business was being done, and that the Coast was not what it used to be. " No all same now ! 'E be dibb'lunt like 'a dunno' what ! " And in all the two men had heard there had been, so it seemed, an undercurrent ring of " Well, stop here if you like, and we are glad to see you, of course ; but " And what was left unsaid told more than what was said, of the outlook for a new trader. Both men were fagged after their first morning in the steamy African air, and Wray was not sorry when his partner said, " Well, suppose you go off to the ship and get our things together, and I'll follow later on with the lighter."

Ten minutes after Wray had clambered over the rail of the little steamer, thinking, as he did so, how clean and cool her poop-deck looked as a contrast to the clamminess of the shore ; he heard a Krooman shouting, " AVray, Wray ! Letter foh' Wray ! " The " Mister " of civilisa tion is a thing persistently ignored by the democratic Krooman of the Coast. The letter was a card, and on it was written shakily and in pencil, "Johnson has served me with a writ. Am under arrest. Let the baggage rip and come at once. — J. A. Menuel." " Oh ! Well, that's lively," muttered Wray, who was then superintending the hauling up on deck of the firm's stock-in-trade. There was only one thing to be done, however. Snatching up his umbrella from where it lay on a deck chair, Wray hurried down the gangway into a boat which lay alongside.

" Damned if I liked the look of that nigger in the pyjamas, when he came aboard this morning," muttered the Englishman, as he remembered that he had already met the Johnson referred to on Menuel's card. " How ever, perhaps it's only a question of a forty shilbng fine for having punched some one's woolly head. Cheap at double the money, b'gad ; but a bad beginning all the same. What the dickens are you grinning at, you figure head of sin ? " Wray's boatman, though sparsely clothed, was a gentleman who possessed three seats in the Httle Methodist Chapel of the town. And he was not accustomed to such off-hand famili arity as this. " Sah," he ejaculated, spluttering with wrath, " me nebber grin, sah ! What yew mean ? Yew take me foh' nigger, sah ? " " No, no ! Nigger ? Lord, no ! Only pull, and get me ashore.

I was— er — talking to some one else." Arrived at the landing-stage, Wray found that his friend had been taken up to the court house. Abraham Lincoln, a broad-minded boy, who bore no malice over not having been engaged in the morning, offered to escort the white man to the court. So these two toiled up the stony main-street together, to the ramshackle weather-board establishment where law was dispensed. From a grizzled and decrepit official who lived on the verandah of this building, AVray learned that, before a judge then sittinoin chambers, Johnson, the native merchant, was pleading under summary jurisdiction for the de taining of Menuel's person, pending the arrival of certain goods from England. With characteristic disregard of ceremony, Wray walked carelessly into the musty court room, and saw Menuel standing before a native judge, whilst Johnson, from the solicitor's table, ranted and raved in support of his plea.

Wray was promptly ordered out of the room, with an indignant " Leave the court, sah ! " from the bench, and told that he must wait on the verandah. There he found an American who had spent some months in the town, and was to leave it that day in the steamer by which Wray and Menuel had arrived. " My friend," said the Yankee, " I know this place all ends up, and I've got no manner of use for it. Take a fool's advice and clear right out before your heart breaks. Digby Farn and Son run this entire Coast, and you can't get behind them. You needn't say I mentioned it, but this prosecution ain't Johnson's. Not much, it isn't. The writ was in Digby Farn's store an hour ago, and you'll have to compromise some how. So-long. I'm off aboard the lugger, and if you're wise you'll come along."

Chapter III Sharp Play

So the Yankee swaggered out into the sunlight, and Wray sat down under the jalousies of the court-room to smoke, and listen. He felt some what left alone, and was glad when a gorgeous scarlet and yellow lizard waddled lazily across the verandah, and lay staring at the toe of his buckskin boot. Through the windows over his head came the sound of angry voices, speaking for the most part in pidgeon English. Round about him in all directions half-naked negroes lay, sleeping and snoring in the shade of the verandah. And outside, the very earth seemed to be throbbing faintly in the glaring heat of the afternoon. " This sort of fooling won't pay, my friend. Something's got to be done ! " Wray rose to his feet as he said this, and moved towards the door of the court-room. At that moment the door swung open, and a SHARP PLAY 27 bare-footed, knickerbockered policeman shouted, " Mistah Wray !