My reply delivered, we resumed our voyage. Seeing us move off the Tuaregs uttered savage cries. We had now a perfectly clear course before us, not so much as a boulder impeding our passage over the black water, shut in between the lofty cliffs, on which the Tademeket very soon appeared. There were now at least a hundred horsemen and a number of runners on foot. They shouted and fumed, working themselves up into a fury as they struck their spears on their shields covered with white antelope skin. It was just such a scene as one pays to see at a circus, and, but for our fears for the future, we should have been delighted with it. Women and children too now joined the procession, watching us as we slowly sped on over the quiet waters of the pass.
Very soon the banks became lower, green meadows contrasted with the black rocks of Tosaye; and noticing a little islet called Adria, we anchored off it.
Our coolies now began to show signs of discontent. The shouts, the cries, and the menacing gestures of the Tuaregs had aroused their warlike instincts, and they conversed gloomily together. I put a stop to this at once, and broke up their discussion; but it wasn’t only the negroes who gave me black looks, Bluzet and Taburet were also furious and full of bitterness at the way we had been treated. I confess I too began to feel put out, and I had to put great stress on myself, and call up all my reasoning powers, to keep my temper. Should I have been able to succeed if Father Hacquart had not been there? I would rather not answer that question.
Fortunately for us he kept his composure far better than we did. He pointed out that it would have shown no particular courage to reply with our guns to the insults of natives armed only with spears, and he told me that when he was travelling with Attanoux amongst the Azgueurs they were received with similar hostility, but that a calm demeanour and the exercise of tact had made their enemies of one day the best friends of the next.
THE TADEMEKET ON A DUNE ON THE BANKS OF THE NIGER.
I harangued my people. Peace was restored, and that so completely that we were presently amusing ourselves with catching the goats grazing on the island and decking them out with collars of different-coloured velvets.
Some negroes, who lived in a village on a little island near ours, came to see us, bringing us some sheep. They did not seem at all excited about what was going on, and in truth were accustomed to the ways of the Tuaregs.
“They are dancers,” one of them said to me, pointing to the Tademeket, who still continued to gesticulate at us.
The next day, March 1, we continued our journey, accompanied as before by Tademeket on the right bank. We passed the Burrum islands, where the river is very wide, and beyond which it flows between two lines of dunes forming its banks.