Adolphe Belot

“ Our journey is not as fatiguing as yours, I admit. Instead of pitching our tents in the desert or on the mountains we content ourselves with sticking large-headed, many-coloured pins to mark your different halting-places. Of late we have been ashamed of this passive travelling, and, after a good dinner, excited by your letters, and enamoured of your descriptions, we suddenly conceived the idea of joining you. Yes, my dear friends, joining you in Africa, at Khartoum!' They were screwed,' you will exclaim. I was, perhaps, a little gone, but I assure you that Desrioux was as sober as a judge. ”

“ If our friends were to leave you to-morrow, you would forget them. It is their presence alone that makes you uneasy, I had almost said, irritable."
"In that case," replied Madame de Guéran, "my illness is known, and you have found out its cause. M. de Morin and M. Périères inspire me with a vague, indefinable, almost inexplicable interest, and this divided interest," she continued, smilingly, "upsets me, worries me, and is killing me by inches."
"No, no, my dear patient, we have not quite reached that point yet. You are not the woman to allow yourself to be done to death for so little. ”

“ The wretched creatures condemned, under a scorching sun, to play the part of living scare-crows, are as a rule the aged of both sexes, who, incapable from infirmity of gaining a livelihood in any other way, thus terribly earn the morsel of bread which their master condescends to throw to them. Most assuredly, my dear Pommerelle, the more I reflect, the less I regret, if indeed I ever regretted it, my yesterday's expedition against the slave-traders. Don't let anybody talk to me again of the ease and comfort enjoyed by the Eastern slave. ”

“ You are asking yourself, as I am, whether M. de Guéran is really a prisoner with the Queen of the Walindis, endowed by common report with so much beauty, this Venus in ebony, as Delange will call her? You are tempted to believe that he is staying by her side of his own free will, and that he does not half like the idea of an expedition from Europe coming to interfere with his love-making? ”

“ Worn out, destitute of ammunition, hopeless, and distressed at so much bloodshed, should we not end by giving up the futile struggle, or succumbing to superior numbers? A handful of Europeans have been known to make head against an entire African tribe, but it would be quite another thing to oppose a regular nation of warriors, commanded by a King, fiery, resolute, and personally interested in obtaining a victory.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, we overcome all these obstacles, and a lucky shot rids us of Munza—suppose all his soldiers take to flight, and our path is open? ”

“ It is not that I am very particular, for, as you know full well, my dear Emily, I have seen so much of the world and its lights and shades, and so many crimes have been perpetrated under my very eyes in this dear Africa, whither I am returning entirely of my own free will, that I am naturally inclined to err on the side of indulgence, and to place a love of play in the category of minor offences. But, as a woman, I have a grudge against M. Delange, seeing that he might very well dispense with his gambling whilst in our society. ”

“ The plain thus became the scene of a horrible mêlée; lances, axes, knives and teeth took the place of arrows. Hand to hand they fought, and bled, and bit, and ate. It was a sight worthy of the infernal regions, a loathsome, revolting spectacle. In one place a group of soldiers might be seen to suddenly cease to fight, and take to dancing round their victims; some would seize on a corpse and cut the flesh to ribands, and others, for the purpose of rendering themselves invulnerable, as Munza had told us, would hack the bodies of their foes to get at the fat. ”

“ We might be asked whether our consciences would not reproach us for waging open warfare against our allies, by whose aid alone we have been enabled to surmount so many obstacles?
Our consciences! Why drag them into the discussion? Are we likely to give way to sentiment in our present position, face to face with an army of cannibals and a negro king who, only a few hours ago, proposed to send us the heads of his eighty wives on copper dishes? Why does he keep us prisoners in his kingdom, and interfere with our plans? Is it not he who is driving us to cunning and artifice? ”

“ We have talked of our devotion, our respect, our affection for you, and the day when you put these sentiments to real proof, you find nothing; all have vanished into thin air, respect, affection, devotion, all taken to flight! You cease to be a widow, and in twenty-four hours we cease to love you; the one woman in the world having disappeared for us, the friend disappears with her, and we have not an idea even of devoting ourselves to the friend. She held out to us the hope of a reward, the hope is taken away, everything is at an end, adieu! ”

“ His inaction weighs upon him, the unknown unnerves him, the utter silence and void around us, which are day by day becoming more marked, make him uneasy. He longs, even at the risk of imprudence, to emerge from out the profound night in which we now are. As soon, too, as he again saw Madame de Guéran, who is regaining her strength, as soon as he could be by her side, and she could speak to him, his insane passion appeared to return in all its strength. ”

“ A few yards from the steamer were numbers of hippopotami, who saluted the dawn by wallowing in the Nile; long lines of crocodiles basked in the first rays of the rising sun; herds of huge buffaloes, with outstretched necks and lowered heads, were drinking at the stream. In the distance, already lit up, forests of mimosas and flowering soonts were seen surrounding a village of the Baggara tribe, those hardy horsemen and bold bandits who give only a grudging allegiance to the Egyptian Government. ”

“ But if the gambler in him was still unsubdued and burning with an unabated fever for play, the savant and the doctor combined were equally wide awake. Committed, in an unforeseen and eccentric fashion, to an expedition of which, only a fortnight before, he never dreamt, M. Delange, gambling being out of the question, did not in the least regret the engagement into which he had entered. The study of medicine, to a man gifted with intelligence, anxious to learn, and despising the beaten tracks to knowledge, is a perpetual excursion into unknown lands—a veritable voyage of discovery. ”

“ We are tempted to forget Africa and to imagine ourselves in Normandy. Goats frisk about the hills, cattle find luxuriant pasture in the plains, and diminutive shepherds armed with miniature lances and clubs keep watch over the flocks and herds. Pretty girls, with upright carriage and shapely limbs, bearing huge jars on their heads, wend their way towards the river. In front of the huts, under a sort of verandah composed of banana branches, the family take their ease, from the hoary-headed ancient to the toddling infant just taking his first lessons in walking. ”

“ We are at this moment in the country of the Monbuttoos, at the court of King Munza, a man about thirty-five years of age, in the full bloom and vigour of manhood. He is tall, his figure is good, and his splendid features recall the fine old statues of the monarchs of ancient Ethiopia. He is not a negro—do not labour under that delusion—he is a dusky white man—a very handsome man, too, artistically dressed and with a majestic mien. Moreover, he is a man of intelligence, and a very powerful sovereign into the bargain. ”

“ But, no; like Madame de Guéran, M. Périères preferred to keep by his side his companion, the friend ready to do any deed of devotion. It was shameful to act thus in the exceptional circumstances in which they were placed! If such want of confidence, such caution, such hypocrisy, and such cowardice pass muster in the world, in the drawing-rooms and boudoirs of Parisian society, they ought not to exist between friends who have together braved death and are ready to brave it again, between wanderers on a savage Continent, in a deadly climate! ”

“ Whatever may be the reason, not a soul strays from the line of march we mark out in advance; there is no quarrelling; the natives and their dwellings are alike respected. We are indeed glad of it; let the battle come—we have right on our side.
Of all the Monbuttoos, Munza, who ought to set an example of calmness and self-possession, is certainly the least tractable and the most excited. If it had not been for Madame de Guéran, who is occupied incessantly in soothing him, he would already have burnt a village or two, and massacred a goodly number of natives. ”

“ Is our love ever entirely free from vanity? Lastly, his great love moved me—how could it have been otherwise?
"Do not be hard upon your friend, nor reproach her with inconstancy. Spare me your reproaches, and do not ever mention the names of MM. de Morin, Périères, and Delange. I really did imagine myself in love with them one after the other, but, good heavens! what a mistake I made! I never felt for them as I feel now! And how far, how very far, are these more or less fair haired, blue-eyed, ordinary men, removed from—my Munza! ”

“ They drag each prisoner singly from the baskets, bring him to the front of the platform, show him to the crowd, and strangle or behead him forthwith. Each execution is welcomed with cries of joy and frenzied shouts; the spectators leap, dance, roll themselves on the ground, and become a maddened herd, whilst the amazons, delirious with delight, drag themselves along through the dust to kiss the feet of the Queen. ”

“ To you alone I will confess that, before I can think of putting off these widow's weeds, before I can dream of beginning a new life, I must see with my own eyes the spot which witnessed the dying agony of M. de Guéran. I want to learn the details of his last moments, to recover his papers, to publish his studies, his works, and before surrendering his name, if, indeed, I do surrender it, to make it famous. You see, my friend," she continued, softly, "that if you have a duty to perform here, I have one equally binding there beyond. Every one has his work in this world. ”

“ You are induced to think that you are on terra firma, in a vast plain watered by rivulets, and interspersed with pools and insignificant lakes. The sun finds a mirror in all these waters and lends additional splendour to massive stems, to flowers of every hue, to plants of every kind, revelling in a perpetual bath, to nenuphars red, white and blue, and to magnificent thickets of the papyrus, which raise their crowns twenty feet above the surrounding flood. ”

“ I could die or be made prisoner without any very great inconvenience, and I offer to make my way to Walinda alone. Oh I don't go into raptures, you may postpone your admiration. At this moment my prevailing feeling is curiosity. I have for a long time been burning with a desire to find myself face to face with this lovely Queen, whose godfather I am, seeing that I have christened her with the name of Venus in ebony. I want, and speedily too, to see her beauty for myself, because one of our bullets may disfigure my godchild at any moment, and convert a pretty woman into a mere corpse. ”

“ He amuses me, too, I confess, by his mixture of stupidity and self-sufficiency, and I must admit that when, perchance, he does condescend to wait on me, he does it, to use his own expression, in a most correct fashion. It is quite a treat, I assure you, in this country, almost a desert, in the midst of this semi-barbarian existence, and under the tent where I have just passed the night, to set eyes on a clean-shaven, neat-looking valet, with my clothes over his arm, my boots blacked and in his hand, and himself in readiness to give me my slippers. ”

“ The Europeans assisted at an attack made after this fashion upon a magnificent male hippopotamus, and, from the boats which had brought them from the "Khedive," they had a capital view of every incident of the hunting or fishing, by whichever name it may be called. For more than an hour the animal struggled against death, dyeing the water of the Nile with his blood, and from time to time, coming up to the surface, he raised his enormous head, noisily inhaled the fresh air, and fixed his eyes on the tiny canoes surrounding, and gradually closing in upon him. ”