Various

“ Early next morning, the little steam launch Ewaffa started from Bonny to convey the consul, his secretary, and myself to visit the domains of Ja-Ja. A broad river stretches on either side of us, the waters of which are thick and green with the rotting slime of myriads of fallen leaves. The banks are not of land, but a dense jungle of trees growing down into the water, and dropping long suckers from their outstretched arms to form fresh trees. ”

“ And so we dragged on all the weary day, now sticking fast, now going on a few miles, the consul’s secretary already down with fever; past several batteries of Gatling guns mounted upon canoes moored across the mouths of creeks, and past the river and town of Andony, with its little mud battery and six-pounder Krupp guns, until, turning sharply the corner of an island of jungle, we find ourselves in the Opobó river, with the distant sea and the white men’s hulks on the horizon. ”

“ There is one class of spinners, however, to which the whir of the loom and the steam-engine has made but little difference. ‘Men may come, and men may go, but they go on for ever.’ All the changes of our complex civilisation make but little difference to these little spinners. They live in their dark little houses; spin their threads; live their lives; die in peace, or else get eaten up, and pass off the scene, making no fuss, seeking no honour. ”

“ The harness falls into place obedient to the touch of the driver, who, with the rest of the men, has glided from the floor above, and has already swung himself to his seat. Two others clasp the chains to the collars; and in another instant each stands ready to mount to his place in the cart the moment the word is given to start. Glancing at our watches, we see that the whole time since the first stroke of the gong is exactly eight seconds—an almost incredible illustration of what can be done by perfect organisation and careful drilling. ”

“ The clamour of these bells, as, in the dead of night, engine after engine rushes at full gallop through the streets, is one of the most impressive accompaniments of a great fire, and is a far more effectual means of clearing a crowded thoroughfare than the shouts of the firemen, so familiar to a Londoner’s ears. ”

“ But Ja-Ja had once, and not so long ago, been a Bonny chief himself; and after many years of fierce warfare with his great rival, the mighty Oko Jumbo, had slipped away one night in the dark with all his people, his wives, and his riches, and founded a kingdom for himself a few miles away on the Opobó river, where he had waxed rich and powerful; so the wily old Ja-Ja thought it wisest to avoid the reaches of the Bonny, even with the king-making consul as his friend, for who could tell whither the far-reaching vengeance of the dread Oko might extend? ”

“ As we steam up the river and across its numerous branches, no sound but the shrill chirp of these monkeys breaks the oppressive stillness. Now and again the black snout of a hippopotamus shows out of the thick ooze on the banks, or a motionless crocodile is seen basking in the sun. ”

“ How the Frenchmen have learned the habits of this well-known little spinner, and cultivated him, and made of him a cheap and nutritious article of diet for the French nation, is fairly well known. How the little fellow builds his house and weaves his ropes, is not quite so well known. The house itself, with its black outside, and the beautiful sky-blue, pearly inside, is a work of the greatest skill, while the mechanism by which it is opened and closed forms a chapter{443} in the world’s wonder-lore. The little spinner lives in a soft, fleshy ‘mantle,’ inside of his stony house. ”

“ He did not care to be under water all the time, so, by the aid of his foot and his wonderful home-made thread, he climbed up the glass to the surface of the water. There he attached some threads above water to the glass, leaving some below. When the little spinner felt like having a breath of fresh air, he ‘hauled in’ on his upper guys, and rose above the surface. When tired of that, he ‘slacked off,’ and took a turn underneath, thus making something like his accustomed tidal habit.
Watching these little animals in their daily movements, one grows to have a fellow-feeling for them. ”

“ This mussel has inherited the spinning business from a long line of ancestors; for when the coal-forests bloomed where the iron furnaces now roar, in the ‘Black Country’ of England, the forefathers of our little spinner were inhabitants of the fresh-water pools in the carboniferous forests. Ages have come and gone since then; the stony remainders of the ancient spinners are dug from out the deepest coal-mines, but the clever little fellows still spin their simple threads along our shores as of old. We sometimes weave their threads into gloves and hose, as a matter of curiosity ”

“ The oil-canoes which came sluggishly alongside the towering black hulks brought whispers of solemn palavers and Egbo meetings in the recesses of the far river reaches; and the long black war-canoes of the Bonny chiefs, with their forty or fifty little black slave-boy rowers, were manœuvring every day with an amount of shrieking and yelling out of all proportion to the result attained. Will Braid and Yellow, two mighty black chiefs, were understood to be in open rebellion against their lawful sovereign, King Amachree of New Calabar. ”

“ The material—carbonate of lime—is extracted from the clear sea-water by a simple process in the life of the animal. Just as our food goes to form blood and bone, muscle and sinew, so does the food of the little spinner go to form his delicate tissues and his hard shelly house. The mussel-house is as much a part of the mussel’s life as our homes are part of our lives, and the processes of building are not so very different either; both are simple, both are mysterious.
To watch this little spinner make his thread is very interesting. ”

“ Wading up to our ankles in mud through the rank dense vegetation, and passing a primitive forge, where four swart negroes were making nails on a stone anvil with a stone hammer, their forge bellows being two sheepskins worked alternately by a man with two short sticks, as if he were playing on a pair of kettledrums—such a bellows and forge, in fact, as you may see any day on the Egyptian hieroglyphics—we caught sight of King Ja-Ja coming to meet us. ”

“ In the natural way, a mussel settles between high and low water mark. When covered by the tide, he opens his doors, and angles for a living with his wonderful fishing-apparatus, for the spinsters of the sea are all born fishermen. ”

“ In the ‘good old days’ before the invention of the spinning-jenny and the steam-engine, when working-men were slaves, and the rich had not the luxuries they have now, spinning was the work of the mistress of the house. Many good stories begin with an account of a fair maiden at a spinning-wheel, and a very ancient rhyme refers to the days ‘when Adam delved and Eve span.’ When a young lady was growing of a marriageable age, in the days of the spinning-wheel, she made preparation for her nuptials by spinning the material for sheets, tablecloths, napkins, and all manner of household necessaries ”

“ I narrated to Williams the remarks of the colonel and the adjutant regarding our prisoner; but the veteran affected to treat the matter very lightly. ‘I’ve had tougher jobs than this in my time, sergeant,’ he said; and then added significantly, pointing to his Snider: ‘Just let him try to bolt, and my word, he won’t get very far!’
The prisoner, Scales, was a repulsive-looking fellow of about twenty-five. He was more a lithe and active than a powerful man, but was nevertheless, by reason of his brutal and vindictive disposition, the terror of all the peaceably disposed men of the corps. ”

“ Our rap on the door-panel is instantly followed by the appearance of a sturdy, good-looking young fellow in a plain uniform of dark-blue cloth, under whose guidance we are soon deep in the mysteries of electric signalling, self-adjusting harness, and all the thousand-and-one ingenious contrivances for time-saving, which have long since made the American fire-brigades the most efficient in the world. ”

“ I was going round a crescent which lay in my road home, when I was startled by seeing two figures cross the farther end, and, as they passed under the light of a lamp, I could have sworn that one was my Winny; the other was a man I could not recognise. I laughed at the fancy, however, as it was impossible that my girl should be there; and I had turned down a street which led to my place, when, by a sudden change of mind, I turned sharply round and went in the direction where I had seen these persons. ”

“ The great ju-ju house itself is much smaller than the celebrated building of human skulls at Bonny, and is a conical mud building with a high thatch roof, surmounted by an ox-skull, and lined with human skulls in the usual artistic, West African fashion. ”

“ He touches the rock, or whatever he desires to attach himself to, with this foot, then withdraws it, leaving a tiny thread, which he has made by some mystic process, in his own body, just as a spider makes her silken cord. The foot comes out again and again, always leaving a thread, until a strong rope is woven, which binds him securely to his chosen home. ”

“ The roots of this jungle intercept as in a net the mud and slime and vegetable débris brought down by the river, and in course of time the inner parts of the jungle become sufficiently solid to afford footing for crocodiles and hippopotami, but quite impenetrable to human beings, the outskirts of the jungle being always comparatively new trees, growing dense and rank in the water itself, and interlaced thickly with great, strong, green hanging creepers, upon which swing and chatter the mangrove monkeys. ”

“ Some of their actions seem almost human, and they form a part of the household, just as the cat, the dog, or the canary. One day a conscienceless sea-pirate known as a dog-whelk settled on this little spinner, and began to bore through his shell with murderous intent. ”

“ Scales had apparently been to the Jew’s, and thus relieved of his handcuffs.
I once more examined the room. The window was apparently a fixture, and no one could make his exit without removing the sash. I next surveyed the roof, and perceived a trap-door giving access to the attics just large enough to allow a man to enter it. ‘My man is there right enough,’ I exclaimed to myself in great glee. ”

“ Both engine and hosecart are furnished with large clear-toned bells, and it is the duty of one of the men to keep these bells ringing during the whole journey to a fire, as a warning to all other traffic to leave the car-tracks in the centre of the street clear for the passage of the engine. ”

“ Our attention is next drawn to the harness, which is suspended from the ceiling exactly over the places occupied by the horses when attached to the engine and cart. Great ingenuity is displayed both in the construction of each part of the trappings and in the mathematical accuracy with which it adjusts itself to the exact spot of the horse’s anatomy which it is intended to occupy. ”

“ A grand old pagan of the bygone school is Oko Jumbo, tall and strong, with a fine handsome face and powerful head, with very little attempt at European dress, or indeed dress of any sort, although his two sons, who reside mostly in England, are civilised gentlemen. [1] Oko, in a few trenchant words, closed the business for the day. He would undertake to produce the two rebel chiefs on board the hulk on the next Thursday, if the white consul would guarantee the attendance of King Ja-Ja the arbitrator, all things in the meantime to remain in statu quo. ”

“ Idols in the usually accepted sense of the word they certainly are not, but rather things set apart for the worship of unseen spirits, or dedicated to the honour of a certain supposed god. A very common ju-ju, and, as it happened, the first one that met our eyes in Opobó, is a white hen cruelly nailed up alive to the top of a pole and left to starve and flutter to death. Then, in succession, we saw a grotesque human figure of yellow clay surmounted by an ox-skull, and covered with a penthouse roof of thatch ”

“ At the reduction of the army referred to in the colonel’s remarks, the services of Mr Scales would to a certainty have been dispensed with had he not at the time been a deserter. Being apprehended and brought back to the corps at the beginning of the scare occasioned by the disturbed relations of Prussia and France, he received two months’ imprisonment, and was sent to his duty. Three days after his release, an officer’s room was broken into and all his valuables abstracted; and in this business it was supposed Scales was implicated conjointly with a comrade of equally had repute. ”

“ A single line of rails is laid in the floor from end to end, on which rest the wheels of the engine and hosecart; for, unlike our English machines, the engine does not carry either the hose itself or the men who work it, a separate two-wheeled vehicle, something of the build of a small wagonette, being employed for this purpose. This hosecart stands in front of the engine, and carries, besides the long coil of tube, all the appliances, such as axes, ropes, &c., which are likely to be needed at a fire ”

“ I lost no time in despatching my companion to an adjacent blacksmith’s shop, in order to have the divided parts of the handcuffs welded together; and this operation was completed within an hour.
It was now dark; the Jew’s house had been locked up by the police; so my companion and I turned into the back yard, in order to await the expected return of Scales. We first made sure that he was not concealed about the dilapidated outhouses, which consisted of a disused coal-cellar and shed. ”

“ The boiler is connected by a tube with a large stationary boiler in the cellar beneath, and a constant supply of hot water passes from the latter to the former. This tube being automatically severed from the engine the instant an alarm is sounded, and the engine-fire kindled at the same moment, a sufficient pressure of steam for the pumps is generated long before the scene of the fire is reached, and so again valuable time is saved. ”