“If all three lights I see ahead, I port my helm and show my red, For green to green and red to red are perfect safety, ‘Go ahead.’ But if to starboard red appear, it is my duty to keep clear. To act as judgment says is proper, port or starboard, back or stop her. But when in danger or in doubt I always keep a good look-out. In danger with no room to turn, I ease her, stop her, or go astern.” Skippers of these West African liners become well known to the voyagers who pass backwards and forwards at regular intervals, and it is my good fortune to sail with one of the most popular of them. The manner Captain Pooley is regarded by travellers may be gauged from the fact that three on this journey are making the third voyage designedly on his ship and another had altered the date of starting by a fortnight to again be with him. Twenty years along the West Coast of Africa and among its native population has not dulled the sympathy of Captain Pooley towards that race. All that can possibly be done for the deck passengers, taken on at the various ports, is effected. Canvas awnings are put up to protect the men “and especially the women and babies,” as he explains, from the downpours of the wet season. The skipper is a storehouse of stories about the Krumen. He tells a tale related by a fellow Captain against himself. He was carrying two white, Rotterdam hogs to the Oil Rivers and noticed one of his Kru sailors seated on the ground, gazing into the pen where the animals were kept. Placing his hand on the Kruman’s woolly pate, he said, “Hullo, my frien’, you look your brudder, eh?” Turning his face upwards the Kruman answered, “Massa Capin, he no be my brudder,” adding, with a twinkle, “he be white.” Secondee, Cape Coast and Accra are the further ports at which stops are made, and at 7 a.m. on the sixteenth day from leaving Liverpool we are at anchor about four miles off Lagos, the capital of Southern Nigeria. Passengers going up-country tranship to a branch steamer of about eight hundred tons which takes them over the sand-bar, which the liner cannot pass, and across the large lagoon, depositing them at Iddo Wharf, the railway terminus. CHAPTER II FROM THE COAST BY TRAIN—THE WEST AFRICAN PULLMAN Iddo Wharf—Strange sights and thoughts—Umbrellas—“Niggers”—Train luxuries—Liquor permits—The iron-horse at the Niger—Ferry and bridge—Budget details. Passing the length of the lagoon—a mile wide at its broadest point—leaving the town of Lagos, with its busy wharves and crowded streets, on his right, less than an hour’s steaming from the Roads and the traveller is at Iddo Wharf. The train is drawn up near the water, and passengers walk a few steps from marine to land locomotion.