My meditations were shortly interrupted by the entry of a barefooted native servant who carried a pot of steaming coffee. The man grinned amiably as he entered, and remarked “Mawnin’, sah!” having made which concise but irrelevant remark--it being about five o’clock in the afternoon--he laid out the coffee service on the table, fished a tin of crackers out of the sideboard, and with another grin, flopped out of the room. He had barely disappeared when the cheerful notes of Captain Bithery’s voice were heard on the stairs, and in another moment that gentleman entered with Pereira. “So you’ve found your way here, have you?” he remarked, slapping me on the shoulder. “Quite at home you look too in that chair. By Jingo! but that coffee smells good! We don’t catch any sniffs like this out of the _Lady Jane’s_ caboose, hey?” “No, I expect you do not,” replied Pereira, as he filled our cups. “I have tasted ship’s coffee, and it was--well, it was not like this.” He smiled apologetically and handed the condensed milk to the skipper. “I’ll wager it wasn’t,” agreed the Captain, smacking his lips and sipping the hot fluid daintily from a spoon; “real good stuff this is. Not native?” “Grown at Akropong,” answered Pereira. “Basel Mission?” inquired Bithery. “No. A friend of mine has a plantation there, and I get the coffee from him. I’ve a couple of hundred bags in the store down below now if you’d like to have some.” A knowing grin spread itself over the starboard side of Captain Bithery’s face. “There’s a cunning old fox for you,” he said, turning to me. “Before I’ve been in his house five minutes he begins shoving his wares under my nose and trying to trade. Oh! you’re a downy old bird, Pereira.” The old man smiled deprecatingly and shrugged his shoulders, remarking that good coffee was selling very well at home just now, and eventually, after some haggling, the whole two hundred bags were accepted as the first instalment of the _Lady Jane’s_ homeward cargo. The conversation now drifted into strictly commercial channels, being chiefly occupied with the disposal of the _Lady Jane’s_ cargo, and I noticed that the Captain glanced at me from time to time as he talked, and conjectured that he was wondering how I was impressed by what I had seen of Africa. That this conjecture of mine was correct, was made evident when Pereira presently left us, to pay a visit to the store, for the Captain turned to me and asked a little anxiously: “Well, Englefield, what do you think of Quittáh?” “It doesn’t seem a bad sort of place at all,” I replied. “I suppose,” the Captain continued after a pause, “you haven’t thought any more of what I spoke about this morning?” “Yes, I have,” I answered, “and I have decided that I don’t mind staying ashore for a month or two and working the store.”