The Bafut Beagles

He led me out of the environs of his compound, along the road for perhaps half a mile, and then branched off through some maize-fields. He walked at a great pace, twirling his spear and humming to himself, occasionally turning to grin at me with mischievous delight illuminating his features. Presently we left the fields, passed through a small thicket of mimbo palms, dark and mysterious and full of the rustling of the fronds, and then started to climb up the golden hillside. When we reached the top, the Fon paused, stuck his spear into the ground, folded his arms, and surveyed the view. I had stopped a little way down the hillside to collect some delicately coloured snails; when I had arrived at the top, the Fon appeared to have gone into a trance. Presently he sighed deeply, and, turning towards me, smiled and swept his arms wide.

na my country dis, he said, na foine, dis country.

I nodded in agreement, and we stood there in silence for a few minutes and looked at the view. Below us lay a mosaic of small fields, green and silver and fawn, broken up by mimbo palm thickets and an occasional patch of rust red where the earth of a field had been newly hoed. This small area of cultivation was like a coloured handkerchief laid on the earth and forgotten, surrounded on all sides by the great ocean of mountains, their crests gilded and their valleys smudged with shadow by the falling sun. The Fon gazed slowly round, an expression on his face that was a mixture of affection and child-like pleasure. He sighed again, a sigh of satisfaction.

Foine! he murmured. Then he plucked his spear from the earth and led the way down into the next valley, humming tunefully to himself.

The valley was shallow and flat, thickly overgrown with a wood of small stunted trees, some only about ten feet high.

Many of them were completely invisible under immense cloaks of convolvulus, squat towers of trembling leaves and ivory-coloured flowers. The valley had captured the sunshine of the day, and the warm air was heavy and sweet with the scent of flowers and leaves. A sleepy throbbing drone came from a thousand bees that hovered round the flowers; a tiny anonymous bird let a melodious trickle of song fill the valley, and then stopped suddenly, so that the only sound was the blurred singing of the bees again, as they hovered round the trees or waddled up the smooth tunnel of the convolvulus flowers. The Fon surveyed the trees for a moment, and then moved quietly through the grass to a better vantage point, where our view into the wood was not so clogged with convolvulus.

na for here we go see beef, he whispered, pointing at the trees; we sit down an* wait small time.

He squatted down on his haunches and waited in relaxed immobility; I squatted down beside him and found my attention equally divided between watching him and watching the trees. As the trees remained devoid of life, I concentrated on my companion. He sat there, clutching his spear upright in his large hands, and on his face was a look of eager expectancy, like that of a child at a pantomime before the curtain goes up. When he had appeared out of that dark little hut in Bafut, it seemed as though he had not only left behind his robes and trappings of state, but that he had also shed that regal air which had seemed so much part of his character. Here, crouching in this quiet, warm valley with his spear, he appeared to be just another hunter, his bright dark eyes fixed on the trees, waiting for the quarry he knew would come. But, as I looked at him, I realized that he was not just another hunter; there was something different about him which I could not place. It came to me what it was: any ordinary hunter would have crouched there, patient, a trifle bored, for he would have done the same thing so many times before. But the Fon waited, his eyes gleaming, a half-smile on his wide mouth, and I realized that he was thoroughly enjoying himself. I wondered how many times in the past he had become tired of his deferential councillors and his worshipping subjects, and felt his magnificent robes to be hot and cumbersome and his pointed shoes cramping and hard. Then perhaps the urge had come to him to feel the soft red earth under his bare feet and the wind on his naked body, so that he would steal off to his hut, put on the clothes of a hunter, and stride away over the hills, twirling his spear and humming, pausing on the hilltops to admire the beautiful country over which he ruled. I remembered the words he had spoken to me only a short time before, If a man has hunting for his eyes, his nose, and his blood, he never gets too old to go to bush. The Fon, I decided, was definitely one of that sort of men. My meditations on the Fon's character were interrupted: he leant forward and gripped my arm, pointing a long finger at the trees.

Dey done come, he whispered, his face wreathed in smiles.