“Dose carriers take all dat you give me dis mornin’ and spend it ’fore we start. Now de headman say he won’t give us nutting for chop widout you dash him first.” I began to suspect that Mr. Annan “get a dry eye,” but it was useless to wrangle over a few shillings, so I handed him another sovereign, which he received with a gleeful guffaw and departed--ostensibly to make an advance payment to the headman--leaving me speculating curiously as to how he proposed to get change for a sovereign in this primitive hamlet. Apparently he managed to do so, for I came upon him unawares shortly after, doling threepenny pieces to the carriers for subsistence; and mightily disconcerted he seemed, for some reason, at being discovered. His account of the dinner that was in preparation was not exaggerated. It was a colossal feed. The black clay bowls came in one after another until the little ricketty table would hold no more, and Annan’s eyes fairly bulged with anticipation. He was indeed “doing me proper,” as he expressed it, and as he was to share the meal he evidently intended to “do himself proper”; indeed, I fancy that, recollecting my inability to make headway with native dishes when we dined together at Adena, he hoped to consume the major part of these delicacies himself. If this was his idea when he ordered the feast, my appetite must have been a revelation to him, for, having decided that henceforth I must subsist on native food, and being nearly famished, I assaulted the dishes with indiscriminate ferocity, devouring yams, cassava, fowl, goat, stink-fish, palm oil and peppers with supreme disregard of their appearance or flavour until the affrighted Annan abandoned all attempts at conversation in a frantic effort to keep pace with me. The apartment in which we dined was converted into a bedroom by the simple device of taking out the table and laying down two mattresses formed of bundles of rushes; and although, after dark, the village resounded with the shrieks of the potto calling to his unmelodious mate in the forest, and sundry scufflings and rustlings about our room were unpleasantly suggestive of rats and cockroaches, I almost instantly fell into a delicious slumber which lasted until I was awakened by Annan dragging at my arm. “Cock-o’-peak-time,[_Cock-crow--Cock go speak._] sah,” said he with a bland smile. “All de carrier men wait outside; dey say dey ready to start one time.” “But I haven’t had any breakfast or bath,” I objected, getting up and stretching myself. Annan laughed. “Plenty rivers in dis country,” said he, “and if you want to take chop, I get some here.” He displayed a gritty-looking collection of roasted plantains in a dirty red handkerchief and moved towards the door, where a crowd of the villagers had assembled to see us depart.