Jean used to take long, solitary walks, with his rifle over his shoulder, shooting or dreaming—ever the same vague reveries of the mountaineer.
It amused him, too, to paddle a pirogue up the banks of the yellow river, or to plunge into the mazes of the creeks of the Senegal.
There were swamps, extending further than the eye could see, where the warm, still waters lay asleep; banks, whose treacherous soil would not support a human foot.
White herons stalked solemnly among the monotonous verdure of the mangroves. Enormous blowing-lizards crawled upon the mud; great waterlilies, white or rose-coloured, unfolded their beauty to the tropic sun, to delight the eyes of alligators and fish-eagles.
Jean Peyral came near falling in love with this country.
XXVI
The month of May had come. The spahis were gaily packing up their kit. With enthusiasm they struck their tents and put together their equipment. They were going back to St Louis to take possession again of their great white barracks, newly repaired and lime-washed, and to pick up again all their old pleasures—mulatto women and absinthe.
The month of May! In our land of France, the lovely month of flowers and greenery! But in the dismal plains of Dialamban May had brought no verdure.
Trees and herbage, every plant not rooted in the yellow water of the swamps, remained blighted, withered, lifeless. For six months not a drop of rain had fallen from the sky, and the land was stricken with dreadful thirst.
And all the time the temperature continued to rise; the strong breezes that used to spring up each evening had ceased; the rainy season was at hand, the season of sultry heat and torrential rain; the season to which each year the Europeans in Senegal look forward with apprehension, as bringing them fever, anæmia, and often death.