“Not so much as a hole in her, Baudry!” I cried.
“No, I don’t think there is,” he replied, “but we had a narrow escape.” We overhauled her, and there was not a leak anywhere. In fact, Baudry declared that her planks were really more watertight than ever.
Then my Tuareg, who had not gone away after all, but whom I had completely forgotten, spoke to me again: “Enhi!” he said, which means simply “look!” but his great wild black eyes shone with pleasure from out of his veil as if some piece of good luck had happened to himself.
Now are these Tuaregs brutes? are they men who can only be swayed by interested motives? What nonsense to say they are!
Where did the interested motives come in here? Would it not have been better for him if our boats had all been sucked down in the rapids? We ourselves and all our goods would then have been his lawful prey.
May Providence only grant that I never find any of my fellow-countrymen worse than the Tuaregs.
You may be sure the brave fellow got his parcel of goods and many other things as well. With his long swinging step he went off to his people again, shouting to us by way of adieu, “Ikfak iallah el Kheir” (“may God give thee all good things!”)
This was, however, but the first of the Labezenga rapids, and that the easiest. We had scarcely gone a hundred yards further when we came to a regular cataract some two feet high, barring our passage. On one side rose lofty heights, on the left the stream was broken into several arms by islands. In fact, there did not seem to be any opening on either side, and we were all but in despair of getting through this time.
Baudry spent the whole afternoon with our guide from Karu, seeking a practicable pass, but everywhere the scene before him was most forbidding, one cataract succeeding another and alternating with boiling whirlpools, whilst the current rushed on at a rate of seven or eight miles at the least. The river simply seems to writhe in its course, and here and there it dashes backwards and forwards from one side to the other of its bed as if in a state of frenzy. There must be a difference of something like seven feet in the height of the water.
The least impracticable place seemed to be on the left of our anchorage between two islands, but I never should have believed that any boat could pass through even that. We had, however, to make the venture, and any delay would only render it more difficult, for the water was falling rapidly.