"This is civilisation! This is liberty!" cried a Frenchman, who had joined our ship in Turkey, and was now seated beside me, enjoying the return to security, peace, and the comfort of his own language.
Yes; it was civilisation, and it was liberty. Has not the name of Marseilles breathed the very spirit of liberty all over the world? And yet his words recalled to me another scene, and the remark of another native of Marseilles.
We were steaming slowly along the West Coast of Africa, landing cargo at point after point, or calling for it as required. Day by day we wallowed through the oily water, under a misty sun, that did not roast, but boiled. Day by day we watched the low-lying shore--the unvarying line of white beach, almost as white as the foam which dashed against it; and beyond the beach, the long black line of unbroken forest. Nothing was to be seen but those parallel lines of white beach and black forest, stretching both ways to the horizon. At dawn they were partly concealed by serpentining ghosts of mist that slowly vanished under the increasing heat; and at sunset the mists stole silently over them again. But all day and all night the sickly stench of vegetation, putrefying in the steam of those forests from age to age, pervaded the ship as with the breath of plague.
One morning the scream of our whistle and the bang of our little signal-gun, followed by the prolonged rattle of the anchor-chain running through the hawse-pipe, showed that we had reached some point of call. The ship lay about half a mile off shore, and one could see black figures running about the beach and pushing off a big black boat. The spray shot high in the air as the bow dived through the surf, and soon we could hear the hiss and gasp of the rowers as they drew near. They were naked negroes, shining with oil and sweat. Standing up in the boat, with face to bow, they plunged their paddles perpendicularly into the water with a hiss, and drew them out with a gasp. A swirling circle of foam marked where each stroke had fallen, and the boat surged nearer through the swell, till, with a swish of backing paddles, it stopped alongside the ship's ladder, like a horse reined up. Out of the stern there stepped a little figure, just recognisable as a white man. His helmet was soaked and battered out of shape. The tattered relics of his white-duck suit were plastered with yellow palm-oil and various kinds of grease. So was the singlet, which was his only other clothing. So were his face and hands. But he was a white man, and he came up the ship's side with the confident air of Europe.