And if you are going to do it, as they say in the advertising pages, “Do it now!”

 [Illustration:  The Mother Superior and Sisters of St. Joseph and
 Their Converts at Old Calabar.]

At Calabar there is a royal prisoner, the King of Benin.  He is not an agreeable king like His Majesty of the Cameroons, but a grossly fat, sensual-looking young man, who, a few years ago, when he was at war with the English, made “ju ju” against them by sacrificing three hundred maidens, his idea being that the ju ju would drive the English out of Benin.  It was poor ju ju, for it drove the young man himself out of Benin, and now he is a king in exile.  As far as I could see, the social position of the king is insecure, and certainly in Calabar he does not move in the first circles.  One afternoon, when the four or five ladies of Calabar and Mr. Bedwell, the Acting Commissioner, and the officers of the W.A.F.F.’s were at the clubhouse having ice-drinks, the king at the head of a retinue of cabinet officers, high priests, and wives bore down upon the club-house with the evident intention of inviting himself to tea.  Personally, I should like to have met a young man who could murder three hundred girls and worry over it so little that he had not lost one of his three hundred pounds, but the others were considerably annoyed and sent an A.D.C. to tell him to “Move on!” as though he were an organ-grinder, or a performing bear.

“These kings,” exclaimed a subaltern of the W.A.F.F.’s, indignantly, “are trying to push in everywhere!”

When we departed from Calabar, the only thing that reconciled me to leaving it and its charming people, was the fact that when the ship moved there was a breeze.  While at anchor in the river I had found that not being able to breathe by day or to sleep by night in time is trying, even to the stoutest constitution.

One of the married ladies of Calabar, her husband, an officer of the W.A.F.F.’s, and the captain of the police sailed on the Nigeria “on leave,” and all Calabar came down to do them honor.  There was the commissioner’s gig, and the marine captain’s gig, and the police captain’s gig, and the gig from “Matilda’s,” the English trading house, and one from the Dutch house and the French house, and each gig was manned by black boys in beautiful uniforms and fezzes, and each crew fought to tie up to the foot of the accommodation ladder.  It was as gay as a regatta.  On the quarter-deck the officers drank champagne, in the captain’s cabin Hughes treated the traders to beer, in the “square” the non-coms. of the W.A.F.F.’s drank ale.  The men who were going away on leave tried not to look too happy, and those who were going back to the shore drank deep and tried not to appear too carelessly gay.  A billet on the West Coast is regarded by the man who accepts it as a sort of sporting proposition, as a game of three innings of nine months each, during which he matches his health against the Coast.  If he lives he wins; if he dies the Coast wins.