Now Sanké’s profession enabled him to go everywhere and to see everything without being suspected, so that he was often able to warn me in good time of what the Toucouleurs were thinking of doing. But those anxious days are over now, and he came to Kolikoro on this occasion merely to exercise his art. His greatest successes have been achieved when he has been disguised as a woman, for he is wonderfully clever at imitating feminine ways. As he dances he strikes a calabash full of little flints, and composes songs on the spot which are full of caustic humour. One of his privileges, and he values it greatly, is that he can say anything to or of anybody without giving offence.
During my first stay at Kolikoro, Sanké was particularly fond of taking off the Mussulman Toucouleurs, and I remember one day how, à propos of their many prostrations and genuflexions, he said, “What pleasure can these fellows give to Allah by showing Him their backs three times a day!” My lady readers must pardon me; the Bambara language is in certain expressions no more refined than the Latin.
THE FLEET OF MY EXPEDITION.
This time Sanké, after having as usual given us all the news, imitated the taking of a village. Wearing huge plumes on his head, and riding astride on a stick with a horse’s head, which represented his war steed, and a wooden gun in his hand, he was in his own person the besieger and the besieged. It was really interesting to see him imitate, with a skill many comedians might envy, the fierce gestures of a mounted warrior charging, the crafty bearing of the foot soldier hidden behind some cover waiting to rush out on the unsuspecting enemy, the fall of the wounded, the convulsions of the dying. The performance ended with a song in praise of the French in general and ourselves in particular. In these impromptu verses Sanké advised women to lay aside their spinning-wheels, for the white men would give them money and fine clothes for much less tiring work. I refrain from quoting more.
On December 12 we embarked our last load, and at half-past two we started.
On the 17th we anchored opposite Sego, where we were to receive from the Government stores the greater amount of the reserve provisions for three months which we had to take with us in some hundred and fifty cases. Bluzet raised his arms to Heaven in despair when he saw the huge piles. “We shall never get them into our hold!” he cried, “unless the axiom that the lesser cannot contain the greater is not true after all.” He did not, however, realize what skilful stowage could do. Baudry disappeared at the bottom of the hold, and nothing more was seen of him that day. And what he did then as second in command he had to do again and again for a whole month, unpacking and repacking, hunting about amongst the confusion of packages and cases for the one containing what was wanted. I confess I often pitied him from the bottom of my heart, the more that the temperature beneath the metal roof of our hold was not one easily borne by a European.
At half-past two in the afternoon Captain Destenaves, at one time resident at Bandiagara, arrived from Massina, where he had been in command for more than a year.
Destenaves had led our expedition to Mossi and Dori. From the latter town, which is situated on the borders of the Tuareg districts, he had brought much interesting information, and he was also accompanied by an old man named Abdul Dori, who declared himself ready to join our expedition.
