Their eyes shone, their teeth clenched, the sweat streamed from
their naked bodies. They might have been slaves chained to the
thwarts of a trireme.

Just ahead of them lay at anchor the only other ship beside our own
in port, a two-masted schooner, the _Gladys E. Wilden_, out of
Boston. Her captain leaned upon the rail smoking his cigar, his
shirt-sleeves held up with pink elastics, on the back of his head a
derby hat. As the rowers passed under his bows he looked critically
at the streaming black bodies and spat meditatively into the water.
His own father could have had them between decks as cargo. Now for
the petroleum and lumber he brings from Massachusetts to Sierra
Leone he returns in ballast.

Because her lines were so home-like and her captain came from Cape
Cod, we wanted to call on the _Gladys E. Wilden_, but our own
captain had different views, and the two ships passed in the night,
and the man from Boston never will know that two folks from home
were burning signals to him.

Because our next port of call, Grand Bassam, is the chief port of
the French Ivory Coast, which is 125,000 square miles in extent, we
expected quite a flourishing seaport. Instead, Grand Bassam was a
bank of yellow sand, a dozen bungalows in a line, a few wind-blown
cocoanut palms, an iron pier, and a French flag. Beyond the cocoanut
palms we could see a great lagoon, and each minute a wave leaped
roaring upon the yellow sand-bank and tried to hurl itself across
it, eating up the bungalows on its way, into the quiet waters of the
lake. Each time we were sure it would succeed, but the yellow bank
stood like rock, and, beaten back, the wave would rise in white