We set sail, therefore, and when night fell we were camped in our new position. In memory of our old and valued friend Gauthiot, who, as I have related, had defended our expedition from all the detractors in France who would have jeopardized its success, I named after him this little corner of earth in the river, our river, where our fate was really to be decided.
If I said that I slept peacefully and well that night I do not suppose any one would believe me.
To face tangible dangers in a struggle with nature or with one’s fellow men, greater or less courage is required, but what we had to do now was to meet such hidden risks, as the miner who goes to his work, not knowing at what moment he may be suffocated, blown up, or crushed to death. Even the miner, however, gets accustomed to the risk he runs, but what no one ever becomes used to is the long mental fatigue of the responsibility of knowing that one mischosen word, perhaps even one wrongly translated word, will be enough to doom to destruction all those who have joined their fortunes with yours with full confidence in you, for whom you are all and everything for the time being.
PALAVER AT GAO.
Father Hacquart slept no better than I did that anxious night. Would he have slept if I had let him retire to his couch? Who can tell? I needed his counsel and his experience, so we neither of us closed an eye, for we discussed the situation, and what we should say, the next day, for the whole night.
The result of our conference was, that we resolved to do the best we could under whatever circumstances might arise, for to foresee them was impossible; in a word, as sailors say, “Trim our sails according to the weather.”
The Father, moreover, took an optimist view of our position, partly because he is naturally of a hopeful disposition, and partly because, by a really singular chance, our experiences coincided in a remarkable way with his own two years before, when he was in the Sudan on a similar journey. To begin with, the time of year was the same, for it was on March 5 that he and Attanoux had arrived to confer with the Tuaregs, Azgueurs, etc.
All night the left bank of the river was illuminated with the watch-fires of the Tuareg camp, which resembled a great conflagration. We had not been wrong, a large, a very large force was assembled there.
In the morning my heart beat fast when I saw a canoe approaching, and I made out in it one of the negro messengers of the chief of the village, a Tuareg, and another native whose woolly crop of hair showed him to be a Moor or a Kunta.