Casual visitors from down the coast had their stay prolonged.
Lazy Sierra Leone men, discharged by their masters for incurable
idleness, and living doing nothing, earning nothing, kept by the
kindness of friends and the aid of an occasional petty theft, found
themselves, in spite of the European cut of their clothes, groaning
under the weight of cases of preserved provisions.
Everywhere the town was busy and animated, but it was in the castle
courtyard Frank found most amusement. Here of a morning a thousand
negroes would be gathered, most of them men sent down from Dunquah,
forming part of our native allied army. Their costumes were various
but scant, their colors all shades of brown up to the deepest black.
Their faces were all in a grin of amusement. The noise of talking
and laughing was immense. All were squatted upon the ground, in
front of each was a large keg labelled "pork." Among them moved
two or three commissariat officers in gray uniforms. At the order,
"Now then, off with you," the negroes would rise, take off their
cloths, wrap them into pads, lift the barrels on to their heads,
and go off at a brisk pace; the officer perhaps smartening up the
last to leave with a cut with his stick, which would call forth a
scream of laughter from all the others.
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