That dinner was a series of surprises, of which I experienced the first when I unguardedly swallowed a spoonful of the orange-red “palaver sauce” and was instantly reduced to tears and suffocation. But the most surprising thing of all was the behaviour of Mr. David Annan. He commenced the meal by popping into his mouth and calmly masticating a large scarlet capsicum. He next pinched off a lump of fufu and, indenting it with his thumb, fashioned it into a kind of cup which he filled with the peppery stew and solemnly bolted with closed eyes like a toad swallowing a caterpillar. Finally, he poured out half a tumblerful of Angostura bitters and drained it at a draught. After this my capacity for astonishment was exhausted, and if he had proceeded to quench his thirst with the contents of the paraffin lamp and to swallow the forks it would have seemed quite in character. But he did neither of these things, and the meal dragged on to the end with no further diversion from my sufferings. Shortly after dinner Mr. Annan took his leave, earnestly beseeching me to keep an eye on Olympio and endeavour to restrain him from the wild excesses into which it was his habit to plunge, and the little mulatto and I then settled down to pass the evening together. The proceedings were not as boisterous as Annan’s warning might have led one to expect, for Olympio was a shy and silent man, and, moreover, unaccustomed to the society of Europeans; so we sat at opposite ends of the table, with a calabash full of chopped tobacco-leaf between us, and engaged in conversation which was so spasmodic and one-sided that it gradually “dwindled away into silence.” Then we sat speechless for some time, during which Olympio observed me continuously, and whenever he caught my eye chuckled softly and rubbed his hands, until I became possessed with an insane desire to empty the tobacco-leaf over him and bonnet him with the calabash. But he saved me from this outrage by retiring to dive into a cupboard, whence he returned carrying a biscuit tin and a weather-beaten musical-box. “You are perhaps fond of music, Mr. Englefield?” “Very,” I replied, with an apprehensive glance at the musical-box. “So am I,” said Olympio, and he proceeded to wind up the instrument; and having balanced it upside down and cornerwise in the biscuit tin--the only position in which it would consent to go--he “gave it its head.” It had but one tune, but of that it made the most, repeating it in every variety of time; commencing with obscene hilarity, retarding to funereal slowness and stopping in the most unexpected places. I felt the old insane impulse reviving, and as I had no wish to see my host fly from the room with his head through his own calabash, I brought the entertainment to a close. “I think, if you will excuse me, Mr. Olympio, I should like to turn in. The hammock journey has rather tired me.”