Taburet was simply boiling over with impatience, and was already inquiring what steamboat we could catch at Dahomey, and wondering by what train he could go to Conquet. The rest of us, though we did not say so much about it, were just as anxious for the start, the more so that a kind of wave of fever was passing over our island, attacking the negroes, who had not always taken the preventive doses of quinine, more than us. Baudry, what with the repair of the barges, the buying up stores in the market, and the repacking, was quite worn out. It was really time we broke up our camp.
On September 15 everything on board was once more ship-shape. Digui had gone to reconnoitre our route the evening before, and had come back very late, looking anxious. “It is very bad,” he said, “but we shall get past somehow.” The coolies, weary as they all were, could not contain their joy at the idea of leaving the Fort, and poor old Suleyman Futanke, who was no doubt afraid of being given back to Amadu, or left behind as useless, made desperate efforts to learn to row. Happiest of all, perhaps, was Atchino, the man from Dahomey, who had spent the whole day before packing tomatoes for us to eat on the journey, and who was dreaming all the time of the bananas of his home.
In the morning, Abdulaye cut a great piece of bark out of a fig tree, and on the plain surface beneath, he engraved with a chisel the letters M. H. D. N. 1896. He then nailed firmly on to the same tree a plank, on which was written in large characters the name of Fort Archinard, for the benefit of those who should come after us.
At the eastern corner of our tata, looking down-stream, we dug a deep hole, in which we buried all our old iron, with the nails and poles we no longer needed, and which would only have encumbered us. They may perhaps be useful to others who may halt on our island. We levelled the soil above them and so left them. We were fortunate indeed that no other cemetery was needed at Fort Archinard, and were most grateful for the mercy of Heaven, which had preserved us all for so long.
We did not wish the natives who had treated us so badly to profit at all by our leavings, so we made a big bonfire of our tables, chairs, doors, etc., in fact of everything that would burn. The coolies and we whites all worked with a will at making the pile, and we set light to the whole at once—camp mattresses, abattis, etc. etc.—with torches of straw, and a grand blaze they made; the crackling of the dry wood and the occasional blowing up of the powder in the cartridges could be heard a long way off.
The coolies meanwhile, like so many black devils, danced round the fire beating their tam-tams, each performing the figures peculiar to his tribe, whilst Suleyman alone looked thoughtfully on, and we watched, not without a certain serrement de cœur, the burning of what had been Fort Archinard, that remote islet in the land of the negroes where for five long months we had lived, and hoped, now buoyed up with illusive joy, now depressed with the knowledge of how we had been deceived.
Somehow the heart gets attached to these lonely districts, where such thrilling emotions have been lived through, where real sufferings and privations have been endured. It is with them as with women, we often love best those who have given us the most pain.
Fort Archinard burnt gloriously. When the smoke became too dense and nearly choked us, we embarked on our barges, which were already launched, and turned back just once more, like Lot’s wife after leaving Sodom, to gaze at the conflagration.
THE BURNING OF FORT ARCHINARD.