Meantime I had been occupying a seat of honour, a real chair, or the venerable remains of one (probably the only chair in the town), infirm and unstable, and with one leg missing. Here I was maintaining a feeble existence against a fearful onslaught of mosquitoes. Another of my boat-boys, an old man of Liberia, named Benjamin, was near me when the quarrel occurred at the other end of the street. Benjamin did not understand the Fang language very well. He heard their angry voices and saw the flash of their swords as they were moving towards us. Hearing them also call out the name of the white man, Benjamin reached the extraordinary conclusion that they were going to kill me. Quite terrified, the old man rushed towards me with the cry, “O my master, my master!” and flung his arms around me, probably with the benevolent intention of dragging me off into the thicket, or hiding me in some hole; but the chair on which I was sitting, being a delicate piece of furniture and lacking a leg, as I have said, was overturned, and I went sprawling on the ground all mixed up with Benjamin, and wondering whether the man had gone mad. By the time I gathered myself up and got my parts together the quarrel in the street was quieted and Benjamin saw his mistake. No further misadventures occurred during the remainder of this pleasant evening. Poor Benjamin! We shall not hear of him again, and we may dismiss him with a word. That was the last journey he made in the _Evangeline_. He was a capable, hard-working and kind-hearted old man, and we were all attached to him. But rum was his besetting sin and finally his ruin. After a long hard struggle against it he at last gave up the fight and became a helpless and hopeless victim. I had to dismiss him. When I left Africa he was in a native town near by, drinking himself to death; nor could he live long. But so great is the multitude hurrying down this same broad road to destruction that one more old man would never be noticed in the crowd. Ndong Koni who figured in the fire-dance, was the one I have known most intimately of all Africans, and the one who made the strongest appeal to my affections. He was a handsome boy, as light in colour as a mulatto, of gentle manners and affectionate disposition. He came to me and engaged as a boat-boy shortly after I began work among the Fang. I taught him constantly. He served in many capacities varying from boat-boy to catechist.