I am bound to admit that “the engineer is messy,” which is magnanimous of me, because I had almost always a row of some kind on with the First officer, owing to other people upsetting my ink on his deck, whereas I have never fallen out with an engineer—on the contrary, two Chief engineers are amongst the most valued friends I possess.
The worst of it is that no amount of experience will drive it into the head of the First officer that the engineer will want coal—particularly and exactly when the ship has just been thoroughly scrubbed and painted to go into port. I have not been at sea so long as many officers, yet I know that you might as well try and get a confirmed dipsomaniac past a grog shop as the engineer past, say the Canary Coaling Company; indeed he seems to smell the Dakar coal, and hankers after it when passing it miles out to sea. Then, again, if the engineer is allowed to have a coal deposit in the forehold it is a fresh blow and grief to the First officer to find he likes to take them as Mrs. Gamp did her stimulant, when she “feels dispoged,” whether the deck has just been washed down or no.
The cook, although he always has a blood feud on with the engineer concerning coals for the galley fire, which should endear him to the First officer, is morally a greater trial to the First than he is to his other victims. You see the cook has a grease tub, and what that means to the deck in a high sea is too painful to describe. So I leave the First officer with his pathetic and powerful appeals to the immortal gods to be told why it is his fate to be condemned to this “dog’s life on a floating Hanwell lunatic asylum,” commending him to the sympathetic consideration of all good housewives, for only they can understand what that dear good man goes through.
After we passed Cape Verde we ran into the West African wet season rain sheet. There ought to be some other word than rain for that sort of thing. We have to stiffen this poor substantive up with adjectives, even for use with our own thunderstorms, and as is the morning dew to our heaviest thunder “torrential downpour of rain,” so is that to the rain of the wet season in West Africa. For weeks it came down on us that voyage in one swishing, rushing cataract of water. The interspaces between the pipes of water—for it did not go into details with drops—were filled with gray mist, and as this rain struck the sea it kicked up such a water dust that you saw not the surface of the sea round you, but only a mist sea gliding by. It seemed as though we had left the clear cut world and entered into a mist universe. Sky, air, and sea were all the same, as our vessel swept on in one plane, just because she capriciously preferred it. Many days we could not see twenty yards from the ship. Once or twice another vessel would come out of the mist ahead, slogging past us into the mist behind, visible in our little water world for a few minutes only as a misty thing, and then we leisurely tramped on alone “o’er the viewless, hueless deep,” with our horizon alongside.
If you cleared your mind of all prejudice the thing was really not uncomfortable, and it seemed restful to the mind. As I used to be sitting on deck every one who came across me would say, “Wet, isn’t it? Well, you see this is the wet season on the Coast”—or, “Damp, isn’t it? Well, you see this is the wet season on the Coast”—and then they went away, and, I believe slept for hours exhausted by their educational efforts. After this they would come on deck and sit in their respective chairs, smoking, save that irrepressible deaf gentleman, who spent his time squirrel like between vivid activity and complete quiescence. You might pass the smoking room door and observe the soles of his shoes sticking out off the end of the settee with an air of perfect restful calm hovering over them, as if the owner were hibernating for the next six months. Within two minutes after this an uproar on the poop would inform the experienced ear that he was up and about again, and had found some one asleep on a chair and attacked him.
It was during one of these days, furnishing reminiscences of Noah’s flood, that conversation turned suddenly on Driver ants. One of the silent men, who had been sitting for an hour or so, with a countenance indicative of a contemplative acceptance of the penitential psalms, roused by one of the deaf man’s rows, observed, “Paraffin is good for Driver ants.” “Oh,” said the deaf gentleman as he sat suddenly down on my ink-pot, which, for my convenience, was on a chair, “you wait till you get them up your legs, or sit down among them, as I saw Smith, when he was tired clearing bush. They took the tire out of him, he live for scratch one time. Smith was a pocket circus. You should have seen him get clear of his divided skirt. Oh lor! what price paraffin?”
The conversation on the Driver ant now became general. As far as I remember, Mr. Burnand, who in Happy Thoughts and My Health, gave much information, curious and interesting, on earwigs and wasps, omitted this interesting insect. So, perhaps, a précis of the information I obtained may be interesting. I learnt that the only thing to do when you have got them on you is to adopt the course of action pursued by Brer Fox on that occasion when he was left to himself enough to go and buy ointment from Brer Rabbit, namely, make “a burst for the creek,” water being the quickest thing to make them leave go. Unfortunately, the first time I had occasion to apply this short and easy method with the ant was when I was strolling about by Bell-Town with a white gentleman and his wife, and we strolled into Drivers. There were only two water-barrels in the vicinity, and my companions, being more active than myself, occupied them.
While in West Africa you should always keep an eye lifting for Drivers. You can start doing it as soon as you land, which will postpone the catastrophe, not avoid it; for the song of the West Coaster to his enemy is truly, “Some day, some day, some day I shall meet you; Love, I know not when nor how.” Perhaps, therefore, this being so, and watchfulness a strain when done deliberately, and worrying one of the worst things you can do in West Africa, it may be just as well for you to let things slide down the time-stream until Fate sends a column of the wretches up your legs. This experience will remain “indelibly limned on the tablets of your mind when a yesterday has faded from its page,” or, as the modern school of psychologists would have it, “The affair will be brought to the notice of your sublimated consciousness, and that part of your mind will watch for Drivers without worrying you, and an automatic habit will be induced that will cause you never to let more than one eye roam spell-bound over the beauties of the African landscape; the other will keep fixed, turned to the soil at your feet.”
The Driver is of the species Ponera, and is generally referred to the species anomma arcens. The females and workers of these ants are provided with stings as well as well-developed jaws. They work both for all they are worth, driving the latter into your flesh, enthusiastically up to the hilt; they then remain therein, keeping up irritation when you have hastily torn their owner off in response to a sensation that is like that of red hot pinchers. The full-grown worker is about half an inch long, and without ocelli even. Yet one of the most remarkable among his many crimes is that he will always first attack the eyes of any victim. These creatures seem to have no settled home; no man has seen the beginning or end, as far as I know, of one of their long trains. As you are watching the ground you see a ribbon of glistening black, one portion of it lost in one clump of vegetation, the other in another, and on looking closer you see that it is an acies instituta of Driver ants. If you stir the column up with a stick they make a peculiar fizzing noise, and open out in all directions in search of the enemy, which you take care they don’t find.
These ants are sometimes also called “visiting ants,” from their habit of calling in quantities at inconvenient hours on humanity. They are fond of marching at night, and drop in on your house usually after you have gone to bed. I fancy, however, they are about in the daytime as well, even in the brightest weather; but it is certain that it is in dull, wet weather, and after dusk, that you come across them most on paths and open spaces. At other times and hours they make their way among the tangled ground vegetation.
Their migrations are infinite, and they create some of the most brilliant sensations that occur in West Africa, replacing to the English exile there his lost burst water pipes of winter, and such like things, while they enforce healthy and brisk exercise upon the African.
I will not enter into particulars about the customary white man’s method of receiving a visit of Drivers, those methods being alike
