OFF TO THE GOLD COAST 5 



to encounter fellow-passengers who can cap their tales 

 with stories of surf-boat landings in other parts of the 

 world; those of us who have gone ashore at certain 

 west-coast ports of South America, and can thus hold 

 our own in the good-natured sport of leg-pulling with 

 surf-running yarns, soon get at the truth of what may 

 be expected landing at Accra is apt to be awe- 

 inspiring in the rough weather that comes with the 

 rainy season, always exciting, but seldom dangerous 

 at this dry season of the year. 



We have spent eleven days at sea when our ship 

 puts in at her first port of call, Freetown, the capital 

 of Sierra Leone. Here we unpack our sun helmets, 

 for it is not safe even to lean our heads over the side 

 of the steamer for a moment to look at what is going 

 on in the little boats swarming alongside, unless we 

 are wearing a helmet to protect our head and the back 

 of our neck. Now is the time when we should make 

 a solemn vow to ourselves that, onwards from this 

 minute until the day we are clear of Sierra Leone on 

 the homeward bound trip, we will respect the sun, the 

 white man's deadliest enemy on the West Coast 

 from seven o'clock in the morning until five o'clock in 

 the afternoon we must never go out without a helmet 

 on; we must be specially careful not to think we 

 need not trouble to put it on because we are only 

 going a few yards say, from the bungalow where we are 

 staying to meet someone at the foot of the stairs; 

 and we must keep that helmet on even if we are under 

 cover of a roof, if that roof happens to be of corrugated 

 iron, as may very likely be the case in some of the 

 cocoa stores we shall be visiting ; also under any kind 

 of roof, such as the awning on the ship, or the dilapidated 

 thatch to a native hut, or the ant-eaten timbers of an 



