Chapter V: Part II: I (2)

The time passed slowly in monotony and heat. All days were alike—the same routine of duty at the spahis’ barracks; the same sun beating down on the white walls; the same all-pervading silence. There were rumours of war against Boubakar-Ségou, the son of El Hadj, which gave the men in red something to talk about, but went no further. Nothing ever happened in the dead-alive town; tidings of Europe came from afar, as if blurred by the heat.

Jean was passing through various moral phases; he had his moods of exaltation and of depression. As a rule he was conscious only of a vague sensation of boredom, a weariness of things in general; then, from time to time home-sickness, which seemed dormant in his heart, would overwhelm him again and make him unhappy.

The winter season drew near; the breakers off the coast were calmer, and there were already breathless days, when the surface of the warm sea lay smooth and shining like oil, reflecting in its vast mirror the strong, torrid light.

* * * * *

Was Jean in love with Fatou-gaye?

He himself hardly knew, poor fellow.

He looked upon her, however, as an inferior being on the same level, perhaps, as his yellow dog. He did not trouble to try to fathom what there might be in the depths of that little black soul—a soul as black as its outer Khassonké covering.

She was deceitful and mendacious, little Fatou, with an incredible blend of malice and perversity; Jean had known this for a long time. But he was aware, too, of her absolute devotion to him, the devotion of a dog to its master, of a negro to his fetish, and without positively knowing to what height of heroism this sentiment might raise her, he was touched and softened by it.

Sometimes his intense pride was roused, and his white man’s dignity rose in revolt. The faith he had plighted to his betrothed, and had betrayed for the sake of a little black girl, accused him to his honest conscience. He was ashamed of his weakness.

But Fatou-gaye had grown very handsome. When she walked with her lithe, well-moulded figure swaying from the hips with that grace of movement which the African women seem to have borrowed from the great felidæ of their country; when she passed by, with her drapery of white muslin floating like a peplum over her bosom and rounded shoulders, she had the perfection of an antique statue. When she lay asleep with her arms above her head, she displayed the curves of an amphora.

Under that high headdress of amber her delicate face, with its regular features, had at times something of the beauty of an idol of polished ebony; her great, half-closed, lustrous, blue-black eyes, her dusky smile, slowly revealing her white teeth, all this had a negroid fascination, a sensual charm, a power of material seduction, an indefinable something which seemed to savour simultaneously of the monkey, the young virgin, and the tigress—and all this would race through the spahi’s veins with a strange intoxication.

Jean had a kind of superstitious horror of all these amulets; at length there were moments when this profusion of _grigris_ vexed and oppressed him. He had no faith in them, to be sure, but to see them everywhere, these negro amulets, to know that nearly all of them possessed the supposed virtue of holding and enmeshing him; to see them hanging from his ceiling and on his walls; to find them hidden under his mats and under his tara—charms everywhere, little objects, old and witchlike, with a malevolent air about them, and weird in shape—to wake up in the morning and feel them being stealthily slipped on to his breast—it seemed to him that in the end all this would weave in the air around him invisible, shadowy shackles.

And then he was short of money.

He said to himself very firmly that he would send Fatou away. He would make use of these last two years to win at last his gold stripes; he would send his old parents a small monthly remittance to make their life more comfortable; and he could still save sufficient money to bring back wedding presents to Jeanne Méry, and to make a respectable contribution towards the expenses of their marriage feast.

But whether it was due to the power of the amulets, to force of habit, or the inertness of a will stupefied by the atmosphere, Fatou continued to hold him in the hollow of her little hand—and he did not drive her away.

He often thought of his betrothed. If he were to lose her he felt that his life would be ruined. The memory of her had a radiance. This “grown-up” girl, of whom his mother had told him, who “was prettier every day,” wore for him an aureole. He tried to form an idea of her face, now that she had come to womanhood, imagining the development of the features of the fifteen-year-old child whom he had left. She was the centre of all his plans for future happiness. It was very precious, this possession of his that was waiting for him over there, very far away, in safe keeping at home.

The image of her, as she was in past days, had already become a little fainter; that of the future was still a little remote, and there were moments when he lost sight of her altogether.

And his old parents! How much he loved them too! For his father he felt a profound and filial love—a veneration which amounted almost to worship.

But perhaps it was his mother who still had the warmest place in his heart.

Take sailors and spahis—all those forlorn young men, who spend their lives far away on the wide ocean, or in the countries of exile, in the midst of the roughest and most abnormal conditions of life. Take the worst of them; choose out the most reckless, the most unruly, the wildest, look into the deepest, most sacred corner of their heart. In that sanctuary you will often find an old mother enshrined—an old peasant from anywhere you please—a Basque in a woollen hood, or a good Breton housewife in a white cap.

* * * * *

XIII

It is the beginning of Jean’s fourth winter season.

Days of overpowering heat without a breath of air. The livid, leaden sky is mirrored in a sea as smooth as oil, where numerous families of sharks are disporting themselves. All along the coast of Africa the monotonous expanse of sand lies blindingly white under the reflection of the sun.

These are the days when the fish are engaged in mortal conflict. Suddenly, without visible cause, the smooth, polished surface of the sea is ruffled with wrinkles, spreading over an area of several hundreds of square yards. Bubbles and little whirling eddies appear. This disturbance is caused by a great shoal of panic-stricken fish, just below the surface of the water, fleeing with all the speed of their million fins before a school of ravenous sharks.

These days, too, are dear to the heart of the black pirogue men, the days they choose for long voyages and races.

On days such as these, when, to our European constitutions, the air seems too heavy to breathe, when life ebbs away, and activity of any description is beyond our strength—on days such as these, if you happen to be lying asleep on a river-boat, in the shade of a moistened awning, you will often be wakened out of your unquiet midday sleep by the shouting and whistling of the rowers; by the noise of water rushing by under the feverish strokes of the paddle.

This is a company of pirogues, passing by, striving in fierce contest under a leaden sky.

And the negro population has roused itself from sleep, and is standing in crowds on the beach. The spectators encourage the competitors with loud clamour, and out there, as with us, the victors are received with clapping of hands, and the vanquished with shouts of derision.

XIV

Jean did not put in more time at the spahis’ barracks than was required for the exact discharge of his duties, and often his comrades would take his place. His commanding officers shut their eyes to these arrangements, which permitted him to spend nearly the whole of his day in his private lodging.

He was now generally liked. The charm of his intelligence and integrity, the charm of his personal appearance, of his voice and bearing, gradually brought everyone under an influence which was unconsciously exercised. In the end, in spite of everything Jean had won for himself confidence and esteem, and had attained a kind of privileged position, which allowed him almost complete liberty and independence. He knew how to perform the duties of a punctual, well-disciplined soldier, and at the same time to remain almost entirely his own master.

XV

One evening Jean returned to quarters when retreat was sounded.

The old barracks no longer wore their habitual air of dejection. Men were standing in groups in the courtyard, talking excitedly. Spahis were running up and downstairs four steps at a time, as if possessed with wild joy. It was obvious that there was something in the air—something new.

“Great news for you, Peyral,” cried Muller the Alsatian, “you are off to-morrow, off to Algiers, lucky fellow.”

Twelve new spahis had arrived from France by the steamer from Dakar; twelve of the senior spahis (of whom Jean was one) were to have the privilege of completing their term of service in Algiers.

To-morrow evening they were to leave for Dakar.

At Dakar they would embark on the French mailboat for Bordeaux, thence they would proceed by the southern route to Marseilles, with halts on the way, affording those among them, who were possessed of hearth and home, an opportunity of dispersing and of paying them a visit. At Marseilles they would embark on the mailboat bound for Algiers—a land of Cockayne for spahis, where the last years of their service would pass like a dream.

XVI

Jean returned home along the dreary banks of the river. The starry night descended upon Senegal, a night hot, heavy, amazing in its tranquillity and luminous transparency.

The current flowed with soft, whispering sounds. The tambour, the _anamalis fobil_ of spring, which he was hearing in this same place for the fourth time, and which mingled with the memories of his first enervating pleasures in this dark country, came to him, faint, from a great distance. Now these sounds were to herald his departure....

The slender crescent of the moon; the great stars, twinkling in a luminous haze, low on the level sky line; the fires alight on the opposite bank in the negro village of Sorr—all these cast upon the tepid water long trails of wavering light; heat dominated the atmosphere, brooded over the waters. There were gleams of phosphorescence everywhere, for all nature seemed impregnated with heat and phosphorescence. A mysterious calm hovered over the banks of the Senegal, a tranquil melancholy pervaded all things....

The wonderful, unexpected news were true. Jean had made enquiries, his information was correct. His name was on the list of those who were to go; to-morrow evening he would sail down this river, never to return.

This evening no arrangements could be made connected with the departure; the offices at the barracks were closed; everyone was out. The preparations for the journey must be put off till to-morrow; this evening there was nothing to do but to dream, collect his thoughts, indulge in desultory reverie, and bid farewell to all that belonged to that land of exile.

His head was distracted with troubled thoughts, incoherent impressions.

In a month’s time, perhaps, he would be paying a flying visit to his village, embracing, in passing, his dear old parents—seeing Jeanne, changed, grown-up and serious—and all this with the speed of a dream.

This was the main idea ever recurring from minute to minute, and each time administering a shock to his heart, so that it beat faster.

But he was unprepared for this meeting. There were all kinds of painful reflections mingling with this great, unlooked-for joy.

What impression would he make, returning after three years, without having gained even the modest stripes of sergeant; bringing home no presents after his long sojourn abroad; destitute as any vagabond; without a sou in his pocket; without even having had time to provide himself with a new outfit to enable him to make a respectable appearance in the village?

No. This departure was too sudden. The prospect elated and intoxicated him, but nevertheless he should have been allowed some days of preparation.

And then, Algiers, that unknown country, made no appeal to him. To have to go and acclimatise himself elsewhere!

Whatever happened, he would have to serve out far from home this term of years that had been carved out of his life. So why not complete it here, on the banks of this great, gloomy river, whose very melancholy was now familiar to him?

Alas! unhappy man, he loved his Senegal! Consciousness of this fact now dawned upon him; he was bound to it by a number of private and mysterious ties. Wild with joy at the thought of returning home, he yet clung to the country of sand, to Samba-Hamet’s house, even to that atmosphere of infinitely dreary melancholy, even to that excess of heat and light.

He was not prepared for so sudden a departure.

* * * * *

The influences of his environment have filtered little by little into the blood running through his veins; he feels himself restrained and held a prisoner by all kinds of invisible ties, shadowy fetters, amulets of dark significance.

In the end, the ideas in his troubled head grow confused; the unlooked-for deliverance fills him with apprehension.

In this hot, oppressive night, heavy with thunderous emanations, strange, mysterious influences contend around him; one might imagine the powers of sleep and death striving with those of dawn and life.

XVII

It is a sudden affair, this despatch of a draft of soldiers.

The next evening, with all his kit hurriedly put together, all his papers in order, Jean is leaning on his elbow against the railing of a ship sailing down the river. He smokes his cigarette, while he watches St Louis fading away in the distance.

Fatou-gaye is crouching on the deck by his side.

With all her _pagnes_ and talismans hastily packed into four great calabashes, she was ready at the appointed time. Jean had to pay her passage to Dakar with the last _khâliss_ of his pay.

He did this willingly, glad to humour this last fancy of hers, and to keep her with him a little longer.

The tears she shed, the “widow’s complaints” she uttered, after the custom of her country, were sincere and heart-rending. Jean, touched to the heart by her despair, has forgotten that she is ill-natured, untruthful, and black.

The wider his heart expands with the joy of his home-coming the greater is the pity he feels for Fatou, a pity, moreover, not unmixed with tenderness.

At all events he is taking her to Dakar with him; it will give him time to think over the question of her disposal.

XVIII

Dakar is a kind of colonial town roughly constructed on a foundation of sand and red rock, an improvised port of call for the mailboats bound for that western point of Africa called Cape Verde.

Great baobabs grow here and there on the desolate dunes; flights of fish-eagles and vultures swoop through the air overhead.

Fatou-gaye is here provisionally installed in a mulatto hut. She declares that she will never return to St Louis. There her plans end. She does not know what is to become of her, and Jean is equally ignorant. He has racked his brains in vain, poor fellow, without hitting upon the vestige of a plan. And he has no more money!...

It is morning; the mailboat on which the spahis are to embark sails in a few hours. Fatou-gaye is crouching beside her four miserable calabashes, which represent her entire fortune, never uttering a word, not even in answer. Her eyes are fixed and immobile in a kind of dreary stupefaction of despair, a despair heart-rending in its sincerity and depth.

And Jean is standing beside her, twisting his moustache, not knowing what to do.

Suddenly the door is flung open noisily, and a tall spahi enters like the wind, in great excitement, with animation in his eyes, and an expression of agitation and anxiety.

This is Pierre Boyer, who has been Jean’s comrade and room-mate at St Louis during the past two years. Both intensely reserved, they have seldom conversed, but they like each other, and when Boyer went away on service to Goree, they shook hands cordially.

Removing his cap, Pierre Boyer murmured a hasty excuse for his wild intrusion, and then he seized Jean’s hands and said effusively,

“Oh Peyral, I have been looking for you since before dawn.... Listen to me a moment. I want to talk to you. I have a great favour to ask. Listen first to what I have to say, and do not be in a hurry to reply....

“You, lucky fellow, are going to Algiers.... I alas! together with several others from Goree am leaving to-morrow for the outpost of Gadiangué in Ouankarah. There is fighting in those parts. About three months to be spent there, and there’s promotion to be won, no doubt, or else a medal.

“We have the same amount of service to put in; we are both of the same age. It would make no difference to your return.... Peyral, will you exchange with me?”

Jean had already understood; he had divined his purpose with the first words uttered. He gazed into vacancy with his eyes wide open, dilated as if with the torment he was inwardly enduring. A tumult of hesitating, contradictory thoughts surged in his head; with folded arms and bowed head he went on thinking—and Fatou, who had likewise grasped the situation, had straightened herself and sat with heaving breast, awaiting what verdict might fall from Jean’s lips.

Then the other spahi continued, speaking volubly, as if to prevent Jean from uttering that word “No!” which he dreaded to hear.

“Listen, Peyral, it will be to your advantage, I assure you.”

“What about the others, Boyer?... Did you ask them?”

“Yes, they refused. But I expected that. They, to be sure, have their reasons. It will be to your advantage, Peyral, you see. The Governor of Goree is interested in me, and he has promised you his protection, if you accept. We thought of you first” (with a look at Fatou), “because it is well known that you are fond of this country. On your return from Gadiangué, you would be sent to complete your service at St Louis; that has been arranged with the Governor. I swear to you that it would be so.”

... “In any case, we shall never have time,” interrupted Jean, who felt that he was lost, and was clutching at a straw.

“Oh yes,” ... said Pierre Boyer, with a ray of joy already brightening his eyes. “We shall have plenty of time; there is all the afternoon before us. You will have nothing to bother about. Everything has been arranged with the Governor; the papers are ready. All that is required is your consent and your signature—and then I go back to Goree and return here in two hours’ time, and everything will be settled. Listen, Peyral, here are my savings, three hundred francs; they are yours. Perhaps the money may be useful to you when you return to St Louis and settle down, or on some other occasion. Do what you like with it.”

“Oh, thank you,” replied Jean. “I don’t take money for this sort of thing.” ...

He turned away his head disdainfully, and Boyer, aware that he had made a false step, took his hand and said,

“Don’t be angry, Peyral.”

And he held Jean’s hand in his, and they both stood there, facing each other, troubled and silent.

Fatou, for her part, had realised that a word from her might ruin all. She had merely thrown herself on her knees again, softly muttering a negro prayer, and had wound her arms around the spahi’s legs, clinging to him.

Jean, vexed that another man should witness such a scene, said to her roughly,

“Come, Fatou, let me go, I beg you. Have you suddenly gone crazy?”

But to Pierre Boyer the pair did not seem ridiculous. On the contrary, he thought the scene touching.

A ray of morning sunshine glided across the yellow sand and slid in through the open door, casting a red light on the spahis’ uniforms, illuminating their pleasant, vigorous faces, clouded with anxiety and indecision, making the silver bracelets flash on Fatou’s supple arms, wound snake-like around Jean’s knees; emphasizing the dreary bareness of this African hut of wood and thatch where these three forlorn young creatures were deciding their own fate....

“Peyral,” continued the other spahi, speaking low, in a gentle voice.

“You see, Peyral, I am an Algerian. You know what that means. My good old parents live at Blidah, and they are waiting for me. They have no one but me. You, Peyral, will understand what it means to return to one’s home.”

* * * * *

“Very well, then, yes!” said Jean, pushing his red cap to the back of his head, and stamping on the ground, “Yes! I agree. I will exchange with you and stay.”

* * * * *

The spahi Boyer clasped him in his arms and embraced him. Fatou, still grovelling on the ground, uttered a cry of triumph, then hid her face against Jean’s knees, with a kind of wild animal’s roar, ending in a burst of hysterical laughter, followed by sobs.

* * * * *

XIX

Time was short. Pierre Boyer departed with the same mad haste with which he had come, carrying with him to Goree the precious document to which poor Jean had affixed a true soldier’s signature, large, correct, and legible.

When the last moment arrived, all the papers were in order, countersigned and initialled, the baggage had been transhipped, and the exchange effected. The whole affair had been patched up in such haste that the two spahis had scarcely had time to think.

At three o’clock precisely the mail boat sailed with Pierre Boyer on board.

And Jean remained behind.

XX

But when the thing was done and past recall, when Jean found himself standing there on the sea-shore watching the ship’s departure, a frantic despair seized his heart—a terrible agony, mingled with terror at this thing that he had done; rage against Fatou, a horror of the black girl’s proximity, and a need, as it were, of chasing her from him—together with a newly kindled, immense, and profound love for his cherished home, and the dear ones who were waiting for him there, and whom now he was not to see....

It seemed to him that he had signed a compact to the death with this sombre land, and that this was the end of him.

And he rushed away across the dunes, hardly conscious of where he was going—urged on by a longing to breathe the air, to be alone, and especially to follow with his eyes as long as possible this ship that was speeding away....

* * * * *

When he set out, the sun was still high and scorchingly hot; in the full light, these desert plains had an impressive majesty. He walked for a long time by the desolate shore, over the ridge of the sandhills, or along the top of the red cliffs, so that he might command a more distant view. A high wind blew upon him, and ruffled the immense stretch of sea that lay at his feet, and still he saw the ship speeding onwards.

He was so distraught that he no longer felt the sun burning him.

Riveted for two more years to this country, when at this very moment he might have been on yonder ship, sailing over the sea, on his way to his beloved village....

Good God! What were these sinister influences, spells, and amulets that had held him back?

Two years! Would the time ever be fulfilled? Would there indeed be an end of it, a deliverance from this exile?...

And he ran towards the north in the direction the ship had taken, that he might not lose sight of her yet. Thorny plants tore him; a swarm of large, wild crickets, disturbed among the grasses that flourish in the winter season, flew against his breast like hail....

He was very far away, alone in the midst of that austere landscape, the silent and melancholy region of Cape Verde. For a long time he had seen ahead of him a great solitary tree, larger even than the baobabs, with dense, dark foliage, a tree so huge that it might have been taken for one of those giants of the flora of the ancient world, remaining there forgotten through the centuries.

Exhausted, he sat down on the sand under the dome-like shade, with bowed head, and burst into tears.

When he rose to his feet, the ship had disappeared, and it was evening.

At evening the mournful country grew stiller and colder. In the twilight the great tree appeared as a mass of absolute blackness, rearing itself aloft in the midst of the vast African solitude.

Before him in the distance lay the pacified sea, infinitely calm; beneath him, at his feet, the cliffs descending in terraces to the great Cape Verde; flat stretches of land, intersected by straight ravines bare of vegetation—a wide landscape of a heart-rending dreariness of aspect.

Behind him, on the side verging upon the interior, rose mysterious ridges of low hills, stretching away out of sight, and distant outlines of baobabs, resembling silhouettes of madrepores.

Not a breath of air disturbs the dense atmosphere; the sun, already obscured, sinks down among heavy vapours, its yellow disk strangely magnified and distorted by the mirage.... All over the sand the daturas open their great white calyces to the influence of evening; the air is heavy with their unwholesome perfume and charged with the maleficent scent of belladonna. Moths flutter about the poisonous flowers. Everywhere among the tall grasses is heard the plaintive call of the turtle doves. This whole land of Africa is shrouded in a deadly vapour, and already the horizon is vague and sombre.

Yonder, behind him, lies that mysterious interior of the land, which once inspired his dreams, ... but now, between this and Podor or Medina or the country of Galam or mysterious Timbuctoo, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that he would care to see.

He knows, or can imagine, all the melancholy, all the suffocating heat of this land. His thoughts are elsewhere now—in a word, this whole country fills him with dread.

His one desire is to break away from all these nightmares, to depart, to go hence at all costs.

* * * * *

Tall, wild-looking African shepherds pass by, driving before them to the village their lean herds of hump-backed cattle.

That simulacrum of the sun, which the Bible would have called “a sign in the heavens,” fades slowly like a pale meteor. Night is here.... All things are veiled in unhealthy vapour, and the silence grows intense.... Beneath the great tree it is still and dark as in a temple.

And Jean dreams of his cottage, with the aspect it wears at this hour on summer evenings; of his old mother and his betrothed. And it seems to him that all is over; he dreams that he is dead, and that he will never see them again.

* * * * *

XXI

The die was cast, and he must go where he was sent. Two days later Jean embarked, in his friend’s stead, on a small warship for the distant outpost of Gadiangué in the Ouankarah. Some troops and munitions were being sent to reinforce that forlorn outpost. The surrounding country was disturbed. Caravans no longer passed by; there were conflicting negro interests, strife between rapacious tribes and predatory chiefs. It was thought that this state of affairs would come to an end with the winter season, and when the force returned in two or three months’ time, Jean would be sent back to St Louis, there to complete his service, as the Governor of Goree had promised the spahi Boyer.

The little vessel was overcrowded. First of all, there was Fatou, who had succeeded in securing a passage by dint of importunity and subterfuge, claiming to be the wife of a black rifleman. She was there in the capacity of follower, with her four calabashes and all her possessions.

There were about ten spahis from the garrison of Goree, who were being sent into the exile of camp for a season; besides these, some twenty native riflemen, dragging their entire families along with them.

These native troops brought with them a remarkable equipage—several wives and children to each man, millet in calabashes for food, and in addition, clothing, household utensils—all packed in calabashes—with amulets in heaps and domestic animals in herds.

At the time of departure the deck was a scene of violent commotion and confusion. At first sight it seemed as if this medley of people and things would never be reduced to order.

Not so, however. After they had been an hour under way, the kit was piled up in miraculous order, and all was still. The negresses who were on board lay asleep on deck, rolled in their _pagnes_, packed as tightly and lying as quietly as fish in a tin, and the ship glided smoothly towards the south, cleaving its way steadily towards regions of ever intenser heat and ever bluer skies.

XXII

A night of intense calm on the equatorial sea. In the midst of absolute stillness, the lightest rustlings of the sails are audible—from time to time a negress, sleeping on deck, utters a groan; the vibrations of the human voice are startlingly loud.

All things lie in a tepid stupor. The atmosphere is sluggish with the dull torpor of a slumbering world.

The milky, phosphorescent sea reflects in its vast mirror the hot transparent night. One might fancy oneself between two mirrors, opposite one to the other, eternally reflecting each other, or imagine oneself suspended in vacancy, for no longer is there a distinguishable horizon.

In the distance the two planes are merged in one. Sky and water, both are blended in cosmic, vague, infinite depths.

And the moon is very low in the sky, a great disk of red, rayless fire, hanging in the midst of a world of pale, flax-coloured, phosphorescent vapours.

In the earliest geological ages, before day was divided from night, the universe must have been permeated with this same expectant calm. The pauses between the acts of creation must have been fraught with this same indescribable immobility in those epochs when the worlds were yet nebulous, when light was still diffused and vague, when the brooding clouds were vapourous lead and iron, when infinite and eternal matter was sublimated by the intense heat of aboriginal chaos.

* * * * *

XXIII

The voyage has lasted three days.

At sunrise the whole world is bathed in a dazzling golden light.

And on this fourth day the rising sun reveals in the east a long line of green—which is at first likewise tinged with gold, changing to a shade so unnaturally vivid that one might compare it to the precise and delicate colouring on a Chinese fan.

This line is the coast of Guinea.

The troopship has arrived at the Diakhallémé outlet, and is approaching the wide entrance to the river.

The land there is as flat as Senegal, but its natural characteristics are different. With it begins a region where the leaves never fall.

The whole country is covered with wonderful verdure, a verdure already equatorial, a verdure that never dies—an emerald green whose vividness is never matched by that of our own trees, even in the radiant month of June.

Further than the eye can see there is nothing but this one interminable forest, of an unvarying flatness, mirrored in the warm, stagnant water, an unhealthy forest whose damp soil teems with reptiles.

XXIV

In this country, too, there was a melancholy stillness, yet it was restful to eyes accustomed to those desert sands.

At the village of Poupoubal on the Diakhallémé the vessel halted, unable to sail further up the river.

The passengers disembarked and waited for the canoes or pirogues which were to convey them to their destination.

XXV

At nine o’clock one night in July, Fatou and the spahis from Goree took their places in a canoe manned by ten black rowers, under the orders of Samba-Boubou, a skilful skipper, a pilot with experience of the rivers of Guinea. They were bound for the outpost of Gadiangué, which was situated several leagues higher up the river.

It was a night without a moon, but cloudless, hot, and starry—a night characteristic of the equator.

They glided up the calm river with surprising speed, borne towards the interior on the swift current, aided by the indefatigable efforts of the rowers.

In the darkness both banks slid past mysteriously; the trees, massed together in the gloom, flitted away like great shadows. Forest after forest sped by.

Samba-Boubou led the chorus of the rowers; his mournful, shrill voice would pitch upon a wild, high note, then trail plaintively down to the depths of the base, and the choir would take up the burden in slow, solemn tones; during the long hours the same strange phrase was repeated again and again, with the same response from the rowers. For a long time they sang the praises of the spahis, their horses, even their dogs; then of the warriors of the family of Soumaré, and then of Saboutané, a legendary woman of the banks of the Gambia.

And when the regular movement of the oars flagged under the influence of weariness or sleep, Samba-Boubou made a hissing sound between his teeth, and this snake-like noise, repeated by all the rowers, rekindled their ardour as if by magic.

Thus they glided at dead of night through the whole length of the sacred wood of the Mandinga religion, and overhead the ancient trees stretched out their massive grey branches, angular shapes like structures of gigantic bones, rigid as stone, their outlines vaguely revealed in the diffused starlight, until they passed out of sight.

Mingled with the singing of the negroes and the sound of the flowing water were the weird voices of monkeys screaming in the woods, or the shrieks of birds of the swamp; all the calls, all the mournful cries that are heard at night in the echoing forests. There were human cries, too, sometimes—death cries heard from afar, fusillades and the muffled sounds of the war tom-toms. Here and there, when the canoe passed by the outskirts of some African village, the glare of great incendiary fires could be seen in the sky. War was already being waged through all this region. Sarakholes against Landoumans; Nalous against Toubacayes; and right and left villages were going up in flames.

And then, league after league, all was still again with the silence of night and the deep forests. And ever the same monotonous singing, the same sound of the oars cleaving the dark waters; the same fantastic voyage as through a land of shadows; the river bearing them ever onwards on its swift current; silhouettes of tall palm trees ever gliding past overhead; forest ever succeeding forest.

The speed at which they travelled seemed to increase from hour to hour. The river had dwindled surprisingly; it was now a mere stream, flowing through the woods, and carrying them deeper into the interior. The night was profound.

The negroes’ songs of praise continued. Samba-Boubou still uttered his weird head note, with which mingled the shrieks of monkeys, and the chorus still made its sombre response. They sang as if in a kind of dream, and they rowed furiously, with superhuman strength, as if galvanised, in a feverish anxiety to reach their goal.

* * * * *

At last they come to a place where the river flows between deep banks formed by two chains of wooded hills. Lights appear high up on a great rock which stands out in front of them; the lights seem to be moving hastily down to the banks. Samba-Boubou kindles a torch and utters a rallying cry. The garrison of Gadiangué are here to greet them. They have reached their destination.

Gadiangué is perched there on the summit of this perpendicular rock, and is reached by steep paths, where negroes show them the way with torches. A large hut has been made ready for the spahis, and they lie down on mats to sleep until morning, which is not far off.

XXVI

The first to awake after barely an hour’s sleep, Jean opens his eyes and sees the white light of dawn filtering between the planks of the hut, shining upon the young men, who are lying half-naked on the ground, their heads pillowed on their red jackets—Bretons, Alsatians, Picards—almost all of them fair-haired men from the north. In this moment of waking, Jean had a kind of prophetic vision, a mournful, mysterious, comprehensive foreknowledge of the destiny of all these exiles, their lives menaced by an ever-lurking death and recklessly cast away.

Close to him lay a graceful feminine form with two black, silver-braceletted arms curving towards him as if to embrace him.

Then, little by little, he remembered that he had arrived the previous night at a village in Guinea, lost in the midst of vast savage regions, that he was farther than ever from home, in a place where even letters would not reach him.

Quietly, so that he might not disturb Fatou and the still sleeping spahis, he approached the open window and gazed out at this new country.

He was overlooking a precipice some three hundred feet deep. This hut that he was in seemed suspended in the air above it. At his feet lay a landscape with the characteristic features of the interior, as yet but vaguely revealed in the pale light of dawn.

There were steep hills, covered with masses of verdure, such as he had never seen before.

Below, right at the foot of the precipice, flowed the river which had brought him thither, a long, silver ribbon upon the mud, partly veiled by a white cloud of morning mist. The crocodiles that lay on the banks looked like small lizards, seen from such a height. The air was filled with an unknown scent.

The exhausted rowers were sleeping down there, where they had halted the previous night, lying in their canoe upon their oars.

XXVII

There was a clear stream flowing over a bed of dark pebbles, between walls of wet, polished rock. Trees formed an arch above it; the landscape had a freshness that one might have associated with any other place rather than an obscure corner in the heart of Africa.

Naked women, of the same reddish-brown colouring as the rocks, their heads ornamented with amber, were everywhere washing _pagnes_, and excitedly recounting the events and combats of the night. Warriors armed to the teeth were fording the stream on their way to battle.

* * * * *

Jean took his first walk around the village, whither his new fate had brought him for an indefinite period.

There was certainly trouble brewing, and the little post of Gadiangué foresaw a time when it would be obliged to close its doors to allow the negro communities time to settle their own affairs—as one closes one’s windows during a passing shower.

But in all this there was movement, vitality, originality even to excess. There were forests, verdure, flowers, mountains, running water—awe-inspiring, natural splendour.

There was no element of gloom in it, and it was all new and strange.

From the distance comes the sound of the tom-tom, the warlike music draws nearer, until it is close at hand and deafeningly loud. The women at their washing by the clear stream, and Jean himself, raise their heads and look up into the blue space framed in polished rock. An allied chief is passing by overhead with his fighting men, scrambling with monkey-like agility over the trunks of fallen trees. He proceeds on his way with pomp, with music heading the procession.... The arms and amulets of the warriors in his train glitter in the sun, as they file past with swift, light step, in the overwhelming heat.

It is almost noon when Jean climbs back along the green paths to the village.

The huts of Gadiangué are grouped together in the shade of great trees. They are of a good height, and have almost a certain elegance, with their high pitched roofs of thatch. Women are sleeping on mats on the ground; others, seated on the verandahs, are soothing small children with long-drawn lullabies. And warriors, armed to the teeth, recount to one another their exploits of the previous night as they wipe their big iron knives.

* * * * *

No. Certainly, there is no element of melancholy in all this. The intensely hot air is terribly heavy, but it has not the overwhelmingly depressing quality of the air on the banks of the Senegal, and the vital, equatorial sap circulates through everything.

Jean looks around him and feels alive. He is not sorry now to have come. He has never imagined anything to equal this.

Later, when he has returned to his home, he will be glad that he has set foot in this distant region, and he will look back on it with pleasure.

He regards this sojourn in the Ouankarah as a spell of freedom spent in a wonderful hunting country, clad with verdure and forests. It seems to him a period of respite from the terribly monotonous existence, the deadly routine of life in exile.

XXVIII

Jean had a poor old silver watch by which he set as much store as Fatou by her amulets—it was his father’s watch, which the latter had given to him at the moment of parting. This, and a medal, which he wore on a chain round his neck, were his most cherished possessions.

The medal bore the Virgin’s effigy. Once when he was ill his mother had laid it on his breast, and though he was then but a tiny child, he remembered the day when it had been placed there, and it had never been removed. He was lying in his first little cot, suffering from some childish ailment, the only one that had ever attacked him. He had woken up and had seen his mother weeping by his side; it was a winter afternoon; through the window the snow was visible, covering the mountain like a white cloak. Gently raising his little head, his mother had hung the medal round his neck. Then she had kissed him, and he had gone to sleep again.

That was more than fifteen years ago. Since then the dimensions of his neck and throat had increased greatly, but the medal remained in its place. He had never suffered so acute a pang as one night, the first he had ever spent in a place of ill-fame, when the hands of some girl had chanced upon the sacred medal, and the miserable creature had burst out laughing as she touched it....

As for the watch, it was some forty years since it had been bought, secondhand, by his father, with his first savings out of his soldier’s pay. Once upon a time, apparently, it had been a very remarkable watch, but now it was somewhat old-fashioned, large and cumbrous, and it struck the hour in a way that proclaimed its very venerable age.

His father still valued it highly. (Watches were not very common possessions among the mountaineers in his village.)

The watchmaker in a neighbouring market town, who had repaired it before Jean went away on service, had pronounced its works to be uncommonly good, and his old father had entrusted this companion of his youth to his care with all kinds of recommendations.

At first Jean had worn it, but with the regiment, whenever he looked at the time, he heard bursts of laughter. The jokes made on the subject of this “turnip” were so uncalled for that once or twice Jean had turned quite red with rage and pain.

Rather than hear this watch disparaged he would have suffered all kinds of insults to himself, and he would have welcomed blows in the face that he could have repaid in kind. It pained him all the more, because privately he was obliged to admit to himself that there was something a little ridiculous about this poor, dear old watch. His affection for it increased; it caused him inexpressible pain to see it thus held up to derision, especially as he realised its oddity himself.

Then he ceased to wear it, to save it from these insults. He did not even wind it, so as to give its works a rest, especially as the jolting it had suffered on the voyage, and the great unaccustomed heat, had caused it to indicate the most unlikely hours—in fact to go entirely off the lines.

He had put it away tenderly in a box, where he kept his most cherished possessions, his letters, his little souvenirs of home. This box was a fetish box; one of those absolutely sacred boxes such as sailors always possess, and soldiers now and then.

Fatou had been formally forbidden to touch it.

Nevertheless, this watch attracted her. She had discovered how to open the precious box. When Jean was away, she had found out by herself how to wind up the watch, how to move the hands and make it strike. When she put it close to her ear she would listen to the little cracked tones, with the inquisitive air of an ouistiti which has found a musical box.

XXIX

At Gadiangué one never experienced a sensation of coolness or physical well-being. Not even the nights were fresh, as in the winter season in Senegal.

From morning onwards, the same oppressive, deadly heat prevailed in the shade of that wonderful verdure. From morning onwards, before sunrise, at whatever hour, in whatever place, always, always, the same temperature, the temperature of a vapour bath, moist, overpowering, poisonous, pervading these forests, the abode of chattering monkeys, green parrots, and rare humming birds; these shady paths, these tall dank grasses, where serpents glided. All the heat and heaviness of the equatorial atmosphere was concentrated during the night under the foliage of the great trees; and everywhere the air was steeped in deadly miasma.

As had been foreseen, at the end of three months, the country was quiet. The war, the negro massacres were over. The caravans resumed their journeys, bringing to Gadiangué from the depths of Africa gold, ivory, feathers, all the products of the Soudan and the interior of Guinea.

And the order having been given to withdraw the reinforcements, a ship was sent to wait for the spahis at the mouth of the river to bring them back to Senegal.

Alas, poor fellows! not all of them had survived. Out of twelve that had fared forth, two failed to obey the order of recall; two lay asleep in the hot earth of Gadiangué, victims of fever.

But Jean’s hour had not yet come, and one day he set out on his return journey along the route that he had taken three months before in Samba-Boubou’s canoe.

XXX

This time it was high noon; the spahis were journeying in a Mandinga pirogue, shaded by a moistened awning.

They kept close to the dense verdure of the banks, gliding beneath branches and hanging roots of trees for the sake of the scanty shade, warm and danger-haunted, which these cast upon the river.

The water seemed stagnant and motionless, heavy as oil, with wisps of fever-impregnated vapour hovering here and there above its polished surface.

The sun was at its zenith; it darted down its perpendicular light from a sky of violet grey, leaden grey, dim with the miasma of the swamps.

The heat was so appalling that the black oarsmen, in spite of all their pluck, were obliged to take a rest. The tepid water could no longer quench their thirst; they were exhausted, and seemed to be melting away in perspiration.

And then, when they halted, the pirogue, carried gently along by an almost imperceptible current, drifted onwards. The spahis could study at close quarters a whole strange world, the underworld that had its being beneath the mangroves and peopled all the marshes of equatorial Africa.

In the shade, in the obscure network of great roots, this world lay asleep.

There, two steps away from the canoe, which glided past without a sound, stealing by so quietly that not even the birds were awakened—near enough to touch it—lay dull-green crocodiles, their sleek forms stretched out on the mud, yawning and grinning idiotically with gaping viscous jaws. There were graceful white herons asleep likewise, snowy white balls, standing on one leg, and to avoid contact with the mud actually perched on the backs of the crocodiles in their trance-like sleep. There were kingfishers of every shade of green and blue taking their noonday rest by the water’s edge, in the company of sluggish lizards and great, wonderful butterflies that had come to life in a temperature like a boiler’s, slowly folding and unfolding their wings wherever they happened to alight, resembling dead leaves when their wings were closed, brilliant as mysterious jewels when their wings were spread, all glittering with blue enamel and metallic gleams.

Above all, there were roots of mangrove trees, roots and still more roots, trailing down everywhere, like sheaves of filaments; roots of all lengths and thicknesses, falling in tangled masses from every direction. You would have said thousands of nerves, tentacles, grey arms, eager to enmesh and envelop all things. Great stretches of country were covered with these entanglements of roots. And swarming all over the mud and the roots and the crocodiles were colonies of great grey crabs, continually brandishing their single pair of ivory white pincers, as if seeking in dreams to clutch an imaginary prey. The somnambulistic movement of all these crabs under the dense verdure was the only sign of life perceptible throughout this sleeping universe.

* * * * *

When the black oarsmen had recovered their breath, they resumed, in low voices, their wild singing, and rowed furiously. Then the spahis’ pirogue cut through the quiet waters of the Diakhallémé and sped down the winding river, gliding very swiftly through the heart of the forests.

As the canoe approached the sea, the hills and the great trees that had characterised the interior disappeared. Once more they were in the midst of the vast plain, with its inextricable tangle of mangroves covering it like a mantle of uniform green.

* * * * *

The overpowering heat of noon was past, and some birds were flying about. Nonetheless a perpetual stillness possessed this region; beyond the reach of sight there was the same monotony, the same trees, the same calm.

There was nothing to be seen but a never varying border of mangroves, recalling from a distance the familiar aspect of poplars by our riversides in France. To right and left, at intervals, there opened out new watercourses where the same silence brooded, watercourses which vanished from sight in the remote distance, ever bordered by these same curtains of perpetual verdure. All Samba-Boubou’s wide experience was needed to pilot the pirogue through the labyrinth of these creeks.

No sound, no movement was perceptible, except, now and then, the tremendous plunge of a hippopotamus, who, disturbed by the measured cadences of the oarsmen, disappeared, leaving great swirling eddies on the mirror of the warm clouded waters.

For this reason Fatou, lying for greater safety in the very bottom of the canoe, with a double screen of leaves and wet cloths over her head, kept her eyes tightly closed. This she did, because she had made enquiries and knew what denizens one might expect to see on these river banks.

When she arrived at Poupoubal, she had accomplished the whole journey without having dared to cast a single glance about her all the way. To induce her to stir, Jean had to assure her very positively that they had reached their destination, and that, moreover, it was black night, and the danger, therefore, at an end. She lay, quite benumbed, in the bottom of the pirogue, and replied in the querulous voice of a coaxing child. She wanted Jean to take her in his arms and carry her himself on board the ship from Goree, and this he did.

These wiles were generally successful with the poor spahi, who would yield at times and spoil Fatou, simply because he felt the need of someone to pet, someone to cherish, and Fatou was better than nothing.

XXXI

The Governor of Goree did not forget his promise to the spahi Boyer; on his return Jean was posted again to St Louis, there to complete his term of exile.