This Sudanite affection betrayed itself by different eccentricities in different people. It really is the effect of the great heat of the sun upon anæmic subjects, or upon those whose brains are not very strong. Sometimes, at about four o’clock in the morning, we used all of a sudden to hear a series of detonations inside the enceinte. “Holloa!” we would exclaim, “some one has got an attack of Sudanite fever, and is working it off by firing at bottles floating on the river.” Or another of the party would seal himself up hermetically in his hut, blocking every hole or crack through which a ray of sunlight could penetrate. The whole of the interior would be hung with blue stuff, under the pretence that red or white light would give fever. Another case of Sudanite!
We could cite many more examples of the disease during our stay at Fort Archinard.
However different may be most of its symptoms, one is always the same—a patient afflicted with it contradicts everybody and shows an absolutely intolerant spirit.
Truth to tell, I must add, in common fairness, that we were all more or less affected by it. We might have managed to pull along peaceably in an ordinary station with occupations which separated us from each other sometimes, but in this island, this cage, for it was little more, we were always rubbing shoulders, so to speak, and constant friction was inevitable. In fact, we ran our angles into our neighbours instead of rubbing those angles down. We were regularly prostrated with our inactive, almost idle life, and the true characters of each one came out without disguise.
THE MEMBERS OF THE EXPEDITION AT FORT ARCHINARD.
At table every discussion led to a kind of squabble. Each of us stuck to his own opinion, even when the most astounding paradoxes had been enunciated. Sometimes, after a regular row, we all sat perfectly mute glaring at each other, and wondering what was to happen next.
At night, or in the hour of the siesta, I used to get out my flute—another form of the Sudanite fever—and play melodies from the Or du Rhin or Tristan et Yseult, but even music failed to calm the disputants. The tension was too great, and I was afraid that, even at this late period of our expedition, things would go wrong in consequence.
All of a sudden a happy idea occurred to me, a regular inspiration from Heaven, which every one fell in with at once.
This idea was simply that we should all work, and the result was the immediate restoration of order.