And then, Algiers, that unknown country, made no appeal to him. To have to go and acclimatise himself elsewhere!
Whatever happened, he would have to serve out far from home this term of years that had been carved out of his life. So why not complete it here, on the banks of this great, gloomy river, whose very melancholy was now familiar to him?
Alas! unhappy man, he loved his Senegal! Consciousness of this fact now dawned upon him; he was bound to it by a number of private and mysterious ties. Wild with joy at the thought of returning home, he yet clung to the country of sand, to Samba-Hamet’s house, even to that atmosphere of infinitely dreary melancholy, even to that excess of heat and light.
He was not prepared for so sudden a departure.
The influences of his environment have filtered little by little into the blood running through his veins; he feels himself restrained and held a prisoner by all kinds of invisible ties, shadowy fetters, amulets of dark significance.
In the end, the ideas in his troubled head grow confused; the unlooked-for deliverance fills him with apprehension.
In this hot, oppressive night, heavy with thunderous emanations, strange, mysterious influences contend around him; one might imagine the powers of sleep and death striving with those of dawn and life.