Walinda had been misled; she thought to kill the wife; she had murdered the husband instead.
She did not know that, on the previous evening, Madame de Guéran, fearing that the mist from the neighbouring marshes of Gondokoro might prove injurious to her husband, had given her tent up to him and had passed the night in the one usually occupied by him.
* * * * * *
Eight days after this catastrophe, the Europeans secured two
negghers, vessels used on the Upper Nile, and sailed down the river.
A third vessel, smaller than the others, carried the coffin of M. de
Guéran.
Before embarking, the Europeans, after having settled all accounts in a most liberal manner, parted with their soldiers and bearers, who immediately entered into other engagements with the slave dealers, so plentiful in these parts at that particular season of the year. The servants alone were retained. Nassar, whose devotion and intelligence had been so valuable, and the two Arab interpreters, Omar and Ali, wished to accompany their masters as far as Cairo.
They had not been afloat for more than a few hours, Gondokoro was still in sight, and the vessels, compelled to tack, were making but slow progress, when M. de Morin thought he saw in the middle of the river a dead body being carried down by the current. He at once got into a boat, and, by dint of hard rowing, discovered that it was the body of Walinda. The splendid corpse, on which death had not yet commenced its work of destruction, which it still respected, floated on the top of the water, gilded by the beams of the setting sun.
The Queen, in despair at having spared her rival and killed the man she loved, had taken advantage of the consternation throughout the camp to escape. She had, no doubt, wandered for some days along the banks of the river, and then plunged beneath its waters.
In death she still followed the caravan and the coffin of her lover.
At Khartoum the Europeans made a very short stay, at the commencement of April. 1874, for the purpose of conferring with Colonel Chaillé Long, chief of the staff to General Gordon. In exchange for the news from Europe which he gave them, he obtained from MM. Desrioux and de Pommerelle information concerning the Uganda territory and its king, M'tesa, to whom he was about to pay a visit.
Nothing of importance occurred during the long voyage down the Nile; all the members of the party kept aloof from each other, wrapped up in themselves, alone with their reminiscences and their thoughts. Advantage was taken of this inaction, following so closely on so agitated a life, to collect and arrange the notes of the expedition, and occasionally to admire the new countries stretching out to the horizon.