One listened, as it were, to a posthumous echo of the voice of the poetess of El Hadj; and her dilated eyes, shining with an inner light, seemed to reveal like a mirror glimpses of the great legendary wars waged in the interior of the land, and of the great days of old; the armies of El Hadj swooping down on the desert; the terrible massacres, when entire tribes were given to the vultures; the assault on Ségou-Koro, all the villages of Massina, covering hundreds of miles of country between Medina and Timbuctoo, going up in flames in the sunshine, like grass in a prairie fire.
Coura n’diaye was very weary when her songs were done. She returned home trembling in every limb, and lay down on her couch. When her little slaves had stripped her of her jewels, and had gently massaged her to soothe her to sleep, she was left there motionless as a corpse, and she continued prostrate for two days.
VI
Guet n’dar, the negro town, was built of grey straw on yellow sand—thousands and thousands of little round huts half hidden behind palisades of dry reeds, and all capped with roofs of thatch. All the peaks of these thousands of roofs affected pointedness in all its extravagance. Some stood upright, menacing heaven; others leaned sideways and menaced their neighbours; others again were tun-bellied, collapsing, seemingly weary of their long drying in the sun, and anxious to shrivel and to roll themselves up like the trunks of old elephants. And all these roofs stretched away out of sight, printing grotesque silhouettes of horned objects upon the monotonous blue sky.
North and south through the middle of Guet n’dar, dividing the town into two parts, runs a long sandy street, very straight and regular, widening out in the distance, until it is lost in the desert. The desert does double duty as landscape and horizon.
On either side of this vast opening lies a maze of tortuous alleys, twisted like the paths of a labyrinth.
To this quarter Fatou has guided Jean, leading him, in negro fashion, by one of his fingers, which she clasps in her firm, little black hand, adorned with copper rings.
It is seven o’clock on a January morning, and the sun scarcely risen. At this hour, even in Senegal, the air is pleasant and fresh.
Jean walks along with his proud, sedate bearing, smiling inwardly at the absurdity of the expedition he has undertaken at Fatou’s desire, and of the personage whom he is going to visit.
Good-humouredly he allows himself to be led along; the walk interests and amuses him.