A BOAT-LOAD OF POLITICIANS
By GRAHAM GREENE THE Liberian launch, lying beyond the bar off Grand Bassa, was making its maiden voyage down the coast from Cape' Palmas to Monrovia. It cannot have been more than 80 feet long, not that I was able to pace it, packed as it was with black politicians. There were 150 of them on board, and when we came along side in the surf boat, they shouted that there, was no room, that we should sink the boat, they implored the captain to keep us out. They were badly scared, for most of them 1-a,l never been at sea before, and the last evening they I ad nearly•run on the rocks off Sinoe. The launch tilted with their fear, first one way, then the other, but the owner got us on board, he even found us enough room to set up chairs, though we couldn't, once placed there, stir a foot.
The launch had been bought second-hand for £18 and repaired for £25. The owner had installed two old automobile engines, a Dodge and a Studebaker; and except off Sinoe, all had gone well. We slid further away from the yellow sandy strip of Africa, the fringe of dark green forest behind the tin shacks of Grand Bassa. The captain, a great fat Kru man in a widebrimnied hat and a singlet, stood in a little glass shelter and shouted orders down a telephone to the engine room just beneath his feet, the sun came blindingly up over the thin • Japanese cotton awning, a Nonconformist minister went to sleep on my shoulder, and the politicians temporarily ceased arguing about the election and began to argue with the captain.
" Say, captain," they protested in formless nasal American negro voices, " you don't wanta use both engines yet. You gotta put out further before you use bOth engines," and the captain argued back and presently gave way. The • poor man couldn't issue one order without setting the passengers arguing with him. Some? times he lost his temper and threatened to put there in irons.
It was 60 miles to Monrovia, and the launch took' seven hours, lurching with incredible slowness across the flat scorching. African sea with. the rocking motion of the 150 argumentative politicians,. It was an Opposition boat, and the presence of a white man on board began to have deep political significance. Before' we reached Monrovia every delegate was convinced that England was behind them. There was to be a Con- vention in Monrovia of the Unit True Whig Party to elect, a Presidential candidate to. oppose President Barclay and the True Whig Party. All is fair during a Liberian election, and the Government Agent at Cape Palmas had tried to arrest the owner of the boat and hold it up till the convention was over.: He had also spread rumours only too plausible that the launch was not seaworthy. Some of the delegates were supporters of a Mr. Cooper, others of ex-President King of slavery ill-fame, so,i although they all belonged to the same party, they had plenty to argue about, and the arguments got fiercer after midday, after the tin basins of cassava roots had been handed round (for meals were included in the tariff' and bottles of cane juice. The cane juice in the mid-day heat worked quickly ; almost immediately half the 150 politicians were roaring drunk. They couldn't do anything about it, because' if they moved More than a foot, the boat heeled over. Once - there was a panic on board at a loud crash which reminded them of the rocks off Sinoe. Some tried to stand up and others shouted to them to be still, and the boat heeled over and the captain Was heard shouting that he would put any man who moved in irons. I couldn't move because the Nonconformist mini- ster was still asleep on my shoulder, and the panic Subsided. We hadn't struck a rock, somebody had Passed out under the cane juice and his head had hit the deck.
An old old man without any teeth suddenly said, " Do you know in Monrovia they have a map of the Whole of Liberia ? I am going to go and see it. It is in the possession of a family called Anderson. They have had it for years. Everyone who goes to Monrovia asks to see the map." Then a lot of people began to trap me into saying whether I was financing Mr. Cooper or Mr. Icing. I might have made history that day, for I am sure if I had said I was financing Mr. Cooper, no one would have voted for Mr. King. And all the while behind the frieze of black faces, a mile away the yellow beach slid unchangingly by without a sign of human occupation. Somebody was fishing from the end of the boat and with tiresome regularity catching a large fish. It might have been the same fish just as it might have been the same patch of sand, but every time the captain would leave the Wheel, . tread over the sprawl of limbs into the bows, and presently, announcing in a loud commanding voice, as if he was ordering somebody to be clamped into irons, " A fish," he would enter the fact in his log book. There Would be a momentary break in the babble until a voice began angrily : "Mishter Cooper ish ish a young man." ".Ex-Presh—Pres—Presh, Mishter King has exshper, eXshperish. . . ."
The Nonconformist Minister hadn't drunk anything. Ile woke up suddenly and without removing his head from my shoulder said, " We shall never go straight in 'Liberia until we let God into our convention. We must let God choose."
I said, " I agree, of course, but how will you know Which candidate God wants to choose ? "
He said,. " God made pencils, but man made india- rubber.". ; The old man without any teeth said, " That's a true Word." .1 The minister said, " They'll giVe us cards when we go to the convention and we shall have to put a mark against a name. But pencil can be rubbed out with indiarubber. If we want God to have a chance in this convention, we must take our pencils and push the point right through one of the names, tear it right out, then they won't be able to do anything with indiarubber." , By the late afternoon nearly everyone was asleep ; they Woke when the promontory that shelters Monrovia carne in sight : the German consulate and just aboire the beach• the long white front of the British Legation. They began to tidy theMselves for the capital, 'put on waistcoats and ties, to wave, when the panic was over as we heeled across the bar, to the reception committee on the little- jetty, the smart Monroyian politicians who cheered and embraced each other with excitement. • But I never quite got away from my fellow passengers. livery day I spent in Monrovia some seedy individual Would pluck at my sleeve among the wooden shacks of Water Street and drawing me aside would remind me that We had travelled together, pointing out to me, as the Secret financier of the Opposition party, that he had left his affairs in bad shape at Cape Palmas or Sinoe and was finding life in the capital very very expensive. indeed, Paost of the opposition sooner or later had to be sent home at the expense of the President.
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