"Liberte, Liberte, Cherie!"

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Title:     "Liberte, Liberte, Cherie!"
Author: Henry W. Nevinson [More Titles by Nevinson]

Just escaped from the prison-house of Russia, I had reached Marseilles. The whole city, the bay, and the surrounding hills, bright with villas and farms, glittered in sunshine. So did the spidery bridge that swings the ferry across the Old Harbour's mouth. Even the fortifications looked quite amiable under such a sky. Booming sirens sounded the approach of great liners, moving slowly to their appointed docks. Little steamers hurried from point to point along the shores with crowded decks, and the lighthouses stood white against the Mediterranean blue.

The streets were thronged with busy people. The shops and cafes were thronged. At all the bathing places along the bay crowds of men, women, and children were plunging with joy into the cool, transparent water. The walls and kiosks were covered with gay advertisements of balls, concerts, theatres, and open air music-halls. Flaunting and flirting to and fro, women recalled what pleasure was. Electric trams went clanging down the lines. Motors hooted as they set off for tours in the Alps. Little carriages, with many-coloured hoods, loitered temptingly beside tine pavements. The stalls along the quay shone with every variety of gleaming fish, and every produce of the kindly earth. The sun went smiling through the air; the sea smiled in answer. And over all, high upon her rocky hill, watched the great image of Notre Dame de la Garde.

"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.

The purser greeted him on deck, and they disappeared into the purser's cabin to make out the bill of lading. The hatch was opened, and the steam crane began hauling barrels and sacks out of the boat, and then depositing other great barrels in their place, according to the simplest form of barter. The barrels we took smelt of palm-oil; the barrels we gave smelt of rum. When the boat could hold no more, the little man reappeared with the purser, and was introduced to me as Mr. Jacks.

He took off his battered helmet, inclined his body from the middle of his back, and said, "Enchanted, sair!"

Then he gave me his oily hand, which wanted rubbing down with a bit of deck swabbing.

"You fit for go shore one time?" he asked in the pidjin English of the Coast, still keeping his helmet politely raised.

"Oui, certainement, toute suite," I replied in the pidjin French of England.

If I had been the King conferring on him the title of Duke with a corresponding income, his face could not have expressed greater surprise and ecstasy.

He replied with a torrent of French, of which I understood nearly all, except the point.

Taking my arm (the coat-sleeve never recovered from the oily stain), he led me to the ship's side and steadied the rope ladder while I went down, the purser following behind, or rather on my head. We sat on the barrels, M. Jacques took a paddle to steer, and hissing and gasping, the queer-smelling crew started for the beach. When we came near, M. Jacques turned with his pleasant smile to the purser, and said, "Surf no good! Plenty purser live for drown this one place."

"That's all right," said the purser. Then the paddling stopped, and M. Jacques looked over the stern to watch the swell. For a long time we hung there, the waves rolling smoothly under us and crashing against the steep bank of sand just in front, as a stormy sea crashes against a south-coast esplanade at full tide under a south-west wind. Gently moving his paddle this way and that, M. Jacques held the stern to the swell, till suddenly he shouted "One time!" and the natives drove their paddles Into the water like spears. On the top of a huge billow we rushed forward. It broke, and we crashed down upon the beach. In a dome of green and white the surge passed clean over us, and then, with a roar like a torrent, it dragged us back. Another great wave broke over the stern, and again we were hurled forward beneath it. This time a crowd of natives rushed into the foam and, clinging to the gunwale, held us steady against the backwash. Out we all sprang into two feet of rushing water, and hauled the boat clear up the shore.

"Surf no good!" observed M. Jacques; "but purser live this time," Then he shook himself like a dog, rolled on the fine sand, shook himself again, and with the smile of all the angels, remarked, "Now we fit for go get one dilly drink."

Leaving the natives to roll up the great barrels from the boat, we climbed the beach to a long but narrow strip of fairly hard ground, on which one solitary thorn-tree had contrived to grow. The further side of the bank fell steeply into the vast swamp of the coast. There the mangrove trees stood rotting in black water and slimy ooze, so thick together that the misty sun never penetrated half-way down their inextricable branches, and even from the edge of the forest one looked into darkness. On the top of that thin plateau between the roaring sea and the impenetrable swamp, M. Jacques had made his home. It was a ramshackle little house, run together of boards and corrugated iron, and bearing evidence of all the mistakes of which a West African native is capable. At midday the solitary thorn afforded a transparent shade; for the rest of daylight the dwelling sweltered and boiled unprotected. Round house and tree ran a mud wall, about five feet high, loop-holed at intervals. And just inside the house door was fastened a rack of three rifles, kept tolerably clean.

"Plenty pom-pom," said M. Jacques, as I looked at them (he returned to the language that I evidently understood better than his own). "Black man he cut throats too plenty much."

Opening a padlocked trap-door in the flooring, he disappeared into an underground cavern. Calling to me, he struck a match, and I looked down into a kind of dungeon cell, smelling of damp like a vault There I saw a broken camp-bed, covered with a Kaffir blanket.

"Here live for catch dilly sleep," he cried triumphantly, as though exhibiting a palace. "Plenty cool night here."

Then, with a bottle in one hand, he came up the ladder, and carefully locking the trap-door and pulling a table over it, he observed, "Black man he thief too plenty much."

With one thought only--the longing for liquid of any kind but salt water-we sat in crazy deck-chairs under the iron verandah, where a few starved chickens pecked unhappily at the dust. Presently there came the padding sound of naked feet upon the hard-baked earth, and a dark figure emerged from an inner kitchen. It was a young negress. Her short, woolly hair was cut into sections, like a melon, by lines that showed the paler skin below. The large dark eyes were filmy as a seal's, and the heavy black lips projected far in front of the flat nostrils, slit sideways like a bull-dog's. From breast to knee she was covered with a length of dark blue cotton, wound twice round her body, and fastened with two safety pins. In her hands, which were pinkish inside and on the palm like a monkey's, she held a tray, and coming close to us, she stood, silent and motionless, in front of M. Jacques.

Into three meat-tins that served for cups, he poured out wine from the bottle he had brought up from his subterranean bedroom. Then he filled up his own cup from a larger meat-tin of water fresh from the marsh. We did the same to make the wine go further, and at last we drank. It was the vilest wine the chemists of Hamburg ever made, though German education favours chemistry; and the water tasted like the bilge of Charon's boat. But it was liquid, and when we had drained the tins--I will not say to the dregs, for Hamburg wine has no dregs--M. Jacques lay back with a sigh and said, "Drink fine too much."

The girl handed us sticky slabs of Africa's maize bread, and then padded off with the tray. Coming out again, she crouched down on her heels against the doorpost, and silently watched us with impenetrable eyes, that never blinked or turned aside, no matter how much one stared.

Meantime, the natives from the beach, with many sighs and groans, were rolling up the cargo of barrels, and setting them, one by one, in a barricaded storehouse. "That's Bank of France," said M. Jacques, locking the door securely when all the barrels were stowed. "Plenty rum all the same good for plenty gold."

Their spell of labour finished, the natives stretched themselves in the shadow of the enclosure wall, and slept, while we sat languidly looking over the steaming water at the ship, now dim in the haze. The heat was so intense that, in spite of our drenching in the surf, the sweat was running down our faces and backs again. The repeated crash and drag of the waves were the only sounds, except when now and again a parrot shrieked from the forest, or some great trunk, rotted right through at last, fell heavily into the swamp among the tangled roots and slime. Even the mosquitoes were still, and the only movement was the hovering of giant hornets, attracted by the smell of the wine.

"Holiday fine too much," said M. Jacques, smiling at us dreamily, and stretching out his legs as he sank lower into his creaking chair.

"One month, one ship; holiday same time," he explained, and he went on to tell us he worked too plenty hard the rest of the month, stowing the palm-oil and kernels as the natives brought them in by hardly perceptible tracks from their villages far across the swamp.

"Bit slow, isn't it, old man?" said the purser.

"Not slow," he answered quickly; "plenty black man go thief, go kill; plenty fever, plenty live for die."

"I should think you miss the French cafes and concerts and dancing and all that sort of thing," I remarked.

"No matter for them things," he answered. "Liberty here. Liberty live for this one place."

"'Where there ain't no Ten Commandments,'" I quoted.

"No ten? No _one_," he cried, shaking one finger in my face excitedly, so as to make the meaning of "one" quite clear.

Just then the steamer sounded her siren.

"The old man's getting in a stew," said the purser, slowly standing up and mopping his face.

The crew stretched themselves, tightened their wisps of cotton, and slowly stood up too.

As M. Jacques led us politely down to the surf-boat again, I heard him quietly singing in an undertone, "Liberte, Liberte, cherie!"

"What part of France do you come from?" I asked.

"From Marseilles, monsieur," he answered, and having helped push off the boat, he stood with raised hat, watching us dive through the breakers. Then he slowly climbed the sand again, and I saw him pass into the gate of his fortified wall.

It was strange. Against that man every possible Commandment could be broken, but there was only one which he could have had any pleasure in breaking himself. And as I sat at Marseilles, watching the happy crowds of men and women pass to and fro, it appeared to me that he would have been at liberty to break that Commandment without leaving his native city.

[The end]
Henry W. Nevinson's essay: "Liberte, Liberte, Cherie!"

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