i8 II. THE JOURNEY 
projecting from the water and moving in the direction 
of the ship. It was a fin of that dreaded sea-monster, 
and whoever has once seen it never forgets it or confuses 
it with anything else. The West African harbours all 
swarm with sharks. In Kotonu I saw one, enticed by 
the kitchen refuse, come to about twelve yards from the 
ship. The light being good and the water very trans- 
parent, I could see for several minutes the whole length 
of its glistening grey and yellow body, and observe how 
the creature turned over nearly on to its back to get 
what it considered worth devouring into its mouth, 
which, as we all know, is placed on the underside of its 
head. 
In spite of the sharks the negroes in all these harbours 
are ready to dive for coins, and accidents seldom 
happen to them, because the noise they make during 
the proceedings gets on the nerves of even these 
wolves of the sea. At Tabou I was astonished to see 
one of the divers quite silent while the rest were crying 
out for more coins, but I noticed later that he was the 
most skilful of the lot and had to keep silent because 
his mouth served as his purse, and he could hardly 
shut it for the number of nickel and silver coins that 
were in it. 
From Konakri onwards we were almost always 
within sight of the coast. The Pepper Coast, the Ivory 
Coast, the Gold Coast, the Slave Coast ! If only that 
line of forest on the horizon could tell us about all the 
cruelty it has had to witness 1 Here the slave dealers 
used to land and ship their living cargoes for transport 
to America. “It is not all as it should be, even to- 
day,” said to me an employee of a big trading firm, 
who was returning for a third period of work to his post 
