On the 9th we crossed over very early, but, alas! the day began badly. El Mekki did not come, but sent instead two messengers, who—I really don’t know on what stupid pretext—told us it was impossible to supply us with guides. I protested in vain, invoking the name of Madidu.
Political reasons imperatively demanded that we should make a friend of El Mekki, but there was yet another more immediate motive for our desire, and that was, we were close to the rapids.
As I have already said, they begin at Ansongo. We did not yet know all the difficulties they would cause us; all we had to help us was what Barth had said about them, and we had never known him wrong, which was quite enough to prove how absolutely indispensable pilots would be, for at every turn we should have to choose the most practicable of the many arms of the river.
I called up all my powers of patience, and tried to discuss the matter quietly, but it was only labour lost. Indeed some negroes who had come down to the bank to speak to us were ordered back to the village by the Kel es Suk.
Now came a second deputation, this time an openly hostile one, of men with determined faces.
“What,” they demanded, “were our intentions?”
“Peaceful and good,” was our reply.
“What is your religion?” they went on.
“That of Issa,” we answered; “whom your own prophet names as his forerunner. We are Kitabi, or people of the book. Your own religion enjoins you to treat us as friends, seeing that we entertain amicable feelings for you.”
Tierno chimed in, arguing with his fellow marabouts to make them listen to reason, but with very little success.