A Question of Latitude | Page 2

one. But you'll see for yourself. That is," he added, "you'll see what
they want you to see."
They were leaning on the rail, with their eyes turned toward the coast
of Liberia, a gloomy green line against which the waves cast up
fountains of foam as high as the cocoanut palms. As a subject of
discussion, the coaster seemed anxious to avoid the Congo.
"It was there," he said, pointing, "the Three Castles struck on the rocks.
She was a total loss. So were her passengers," he added. "They ate
them."
Everett gazed suspiciously at the unmoved face of the veteran.
"WHO ate them?" he asked guardedly. "Sharks?"
"The natives that live back of that shore-line in the lagoons."
Everett laughed with the assurance of one for whom a trap had been
laid and who had cleverly avoided it.
"Cannibals," he mocked. "Cannibals went out of date with pirates. But
perhaps," he added apologetically, "this happened some years ago?"
"Happened last month," said the trader.
"But Liberia is a perfectly good republic," protested Everett. "The
blacks there may not be as far advanced as in your colonies, but they're
not cannibals."

"Monrovia is a very small part of Liberia," said the trader dryly. "And
none of these protectorates, or crown colonies, on this coast pretends to
control much of the Hinterland. There is Sierra Leone, for instance,
about the oldest of them. Last year the governor celebrated the
hundredth anniversary of the year the British abolished slavery. They
had parades and tea-fights, and all the blacks were in the street in straw
hats with cricket ribbons, thanking God they were not as other men are,
not slaves like their grandfathers. Well, just at the height of the
jubilation, the tribes within twenty miles of the town sent in to say that
they, also, were holding a palaver, and it was to mark the fact that they
NEVER had been slaves and never would be, and, if the governor
doubted it, to send out his fighting men and they'd prove it. It cast quite
a gloom over the celebration."
"Do you mean that only twenty miles from the coast--" began Everett.
"TEN miles," said the Coaster. "wait till you see Calabar. That's our
Exhibit A. The cleanest, best administered. Everything there is model:
hospitals, barracks, golf links. Last year, ten miles from Calabar, Dr.
Stewart rode his bicycle into a native village. The king tortured him six
days, cut him up, and sent pieces of him to fifty villages with the
message: 'You eat each other. WE eat white chop.' That was ten miles
from our model barracks."
For some moments the muckraker considered the statement
thoughtfully.
"You mean," he inquired, "that the atrocities are not all on the side of
the white men?"
"Atrocities?" exclaimed the trader. "I wasn't talking of atrocities. Are
you looking for them?"
"I'm not running away from them," laughed Everett. "Lowell's Weekly
is sending me to the Congo to find out the truth, and to try to help put
an end to them."
In his turn the trader considered the statement carefully.

"Among the natives," he explained, painstakingly picking each word,
"what you call 'atrocities' are customs of warfare, forms of punishment.
When they go to war they EXPECT to be tortured; they KNOW, if
they're killed, they'll be eaten. The white man comes here and finds
these customs have existed for centuries. He adopts them, because--"
"One moment!" interrupted Everett warmly. "That does not excuse
HIM. The point is, that with him they have NOT existed. To him they
should be against his conscience, indecent, horrible! He has a greater
knowledge, a much higher intelligence; he should lift the native, not
sink to him."
The Coaster took his pipe from his mouth, and twice opened his lips to
speak. Finally, he blew the smoke into the air, and shook his head.
"What's the use!" he exclaimed.
"Try," laughed Everett. "Maybe I'm not as unintelligent as I talk."
"You must get this right," protested the Coaster. "It doesn't matter a
damn what a man BRINGS here, what his training WAS, what HE IS.
The thing is too strong for him."
"What thing?"
"That!" said the Coaster. He threw out his arm at the brooding
mountains, the dark lagoons, the glaring coast-line against which the
waves shot into the air with the shock and roar of twelve-inch guns.
"The first white man came to Sierra Leone five hundred years before
Christ," said the Coaster. "And, in twenty-two hundred years, he's got
just twenty miles inland. The native didn't need forts, or a navy, to stop
him. He had three allies: those waves, the fever, and the sun. Especially
the sun. The black man goes bare-headed, and the sun lets him pass.
The white man covers his head