CHAPTER VIII
MISTAKES AND FALSE NEWS
We must now return to our arrival at Say. Although the days there were most of them monotonous enough, they brought their little ups and downs, and we received news now and then, of which, under the circumstances, we naturally sometimes exaggerated the importance. It would be wearisome for me as well as for the reader to give an account of what happened every day during our long winter at Fort Archinard. My notes were written under various difficulties and in very varying moods, reflecting alike my exaggerated low spirits when things went wrong, and my excess of delight when anything occurred to cheer me. Consecutive pages of my journal often contradicted each other, and any one reading them would imagine they were written by two different persons; but this is always the way with travellers, and even Barth himself was not exempt from such fluctuations of mood.
My journal in extenso might serve as an illustration of the psychology of the lie as illustrated amongst the negroes and Mussulmans, but no other useful purpose, so I shall greatly condense it. The reader will still, I hope, get a very good idea of all we went through. If what I quote is rather incoherent, excuses must be made for me, for the news we got was often incoherent enough, and our life at the Fort was rather a puzzle too sometimes, with our alternations of hope and anxiety.
Friday, April 10.—We are getting on with our fort; our abattis are finished and ready for any attack. (This was written the day after our arrival, whilst our work was still in full swing.)
We put the Aube in dry dock to-day, and it took the united efforts of us all to haul her into position: non-commissioned officers, interpreters, servants, all had to work, and even we white men lent a hand. During the operation of turning her on to her side, the poor Aube might have tumbled to pieces, for all her planks were loose. But she held together yet once more, and, as you will see, we did not have to abandon her until the very end of our voyage.
A new recruit joined us to-day, my journal goes on, so with Suleyman Futanké we have two extra hands now. This was how he came to join us. During the siesta hour we heard a man shouting from the other side of the river, “Agony! agony!” and looking out we saw some one waving a white cloth. We sent the Dantec to fetch him, and when he arrived he kept shouting “Agony! agony!” in a joyful voice. He showed us his cap of European make, evidently expecting us to understand what he meant, but that did not explain the use of the word “agony” so often.
It was Tedian Diarra, a big Bambarra, who had acted as guide to General Dodds in the Dahomey campaign, who solved the mystery at last, and told us that the man had been a porter at Say to the Decœur expedition. He had been taken ill with an attack of some discharge from the joints, and had been left under the care of the chief of the village to be handed over to the first Frenchman who should happen to pass. The poor fellow, whose name was Atchino,—at least that is what we always called him,—was trying to explain to us that he came from the village of Agony on the Wemé. He had feared he should never see his native village again, with its bananas and oil palms; but as soon as he heard of our arrival at Say, he came to take refuge with us. Later I indemnified the man who had taken care of him for the expense he had been put to. We made this Atchino our gardener, and he turned out a very useful fellow, a decided acquisition to our small staff.
Monday, April 13.—We finished the repairs of the Aube. She still let the water in like a strainer, but, as we always said, we were used to that. This expression, “used to it,” was perpetually employed by us all, and it enabled us to bear with philosophy all our troubles. It is, in fact, the expression which gilds the bitterest pills to be swallowed on an exploring expedition, and no one need dream of starting on such a trip as ours if they cannot adopt what we may call the philosophy of use and wont on every occasion. Have twenty-five of us got to pack into a boat about the size of my hand? What does it matter? go on board, you’ll get used to it. Have we got to find place for provisions and things to exchange with the natives when there is no more room? Never mind, ship them all, we shall get used to them when we settle down. Are you in a hostile district? Do rumours of war, of approaching columns of thousands and thousands of natives uniting to attack, trouble you? Never mind, they will turn out not to be so many after all; you are used to these rumours now. You have some dreadful rapids in front of you; you have got to pass them somehow. There are so many, you can’t count them. Shall we draw back? Shall we allow them to check our onward march? No, no, we shall get used to them. If you take them one by one, you will find that each fresh one is not worse than the last, and that the hundredth is just like the first. You get quite used to them, at least if you do not lose your boats and your life too. Which would be the final getting used to things, the last settling down!
A diavandu and his sister one day presented themselves at the camp. These diavandus, who are the guides and confidants of the people, are everywhere met with amongst the Fulahs. I don’t know what trade the sister followed, but this diavandu came to offer us his services. He offered to perform all the usual duties of his office on our behalf, and was ready either to sell us milk, or to act as a spy for us. He was a little fellow, of puny, sickly appearance. We made him drink some quinine dissolved in water, and our people told him that the bitter beverage contained all the talismans of the infernal regions. Certainly the witches in Macbeth never made a philtre nastier than our mixture.
Our diavandu swore by the Koran, without any mental reservations, that he would be faithful to us, and our spells and the grisgris we had given him would, he knew, kill him if he were false to us, or betrayed us in any way. Then we sent him to see what was going on in Amadu’s camp. I do not know what eventually became of him, but perhaps if he was false to us the quinine killed him by auto-suggestion; perhaps he was simply suppressed by our enemies, or he may have died a natural death; anyhow we never saw either him or his sister again.