CHAPTER XLI.

"We were soon enlightened as to the meaning of the uproar.

"The negroes were gifted with inexorable logic. According to them, since we wished to carry off our prisoners into bondage, we ought to take the same precautions with them that they had with their slaves. As their own wrists had been hung with chains, and their necks forced under the yoke, we ought to put the same measures in force, and to this end they very kindly handed over to us the necessary articles.

"It would have been positively unfair to deprive these good folk of their little enjoyment, and, as regards the escort, seeing that they had had every sort of reason to believe that they were doomed to be massacred, they might very well think themselves lucky in getting off with a simple application of the _lex talionis_. Consequently, we did not see any use in protesting against this decidedly African idea, and we let our new friends fetter their prisoners to their heart's content.

"At such moments as these, my dear fellow, men who have any pretensions to common sense will go with the stream, yield to circumstances, and give up their sentimental tendencies. And, moreover, I will not attempt to conceal from you that I felt a thrill of enjoyment at the prospect of seeing those worthy traders undergoing for several hours the identical treatment which for so many years they had been inflicting upon the tribes in these regions. They made the most ludicrous efforts to get their heads out of the yokes and to free their shoulders from the heavy loads with which their former slaves were weighing them down.

"I rejoiced also, you may be sure, over the moral torture they were undergoing. Please understand that I do not by this mean that they had any sense of humiliation—they were incapable of any such feeling; I allude to the injury done to their commercial interests. Just think for a moment—after having undertaken, and almost accomplished, so hazardous a journey, after having gone through such toilsome exertions to provide slaves for the markets of southern Africa—after all this, to see the fruits of their labour gone at one fell swoop! To have to surrender a certain profit, as they thought, and be at all the expense of their first purchase, besides the cost of provisions, cords, chains and yokes! The chains and the yokes, it is true, had been generously restored, and they could take them with them on their necks, but the bags of rice and durra, of which they had provided a supply sufficient to meet their wants across the deserts of Bahiouda and Nubia, became the property of the negroes. These inconsiderate people were even indiscreet enough to lay violent hands on the private supplies of the chief and his escort, dried meat, dates, coffee, tobacco, which up to now they had been compelled to carry on their heads without the power of touching them.

"This wholesale robbery of eatables, however, created a diversion; for the negroes, after having securely rivetted their prisoners and handed them over to us, gave themselves up to the enjoyment of such a meal as they had not made for a long time. We took advantage of the liberty thus accorded to us, and commenced our preparations for departure.

"At least five leagues separated us from Matamma, and some amongst us would be obliged to accomplish the journey on foot. Périères and Delange, who had been dismounted in the fray, might have made use of the horses allotted to our interpreters; but they preferred handing them over to our wounded enemies, on whom the Doctor had operated, to the great astonishment of the negroes. In fact, when the latter saw Delange open his instrument case and take out the forceps to extract the bullets, they thought we had returned to a better frame of mind, and were arranging the preliminaries of an execution. They speedily recognized that we have a peculiar way of our own as regards the infliction of torture, by which health is restored to the victim, and he is set on his feet, and it is just possible that this lesson of practical morality was not thrown away on these overgrown children, cruel, as all children are, by instinct and through ignorance.

"Madame de Guéran was anxious to take with her the female slave, the primary cause of all the trouble, whom she had already restored to consciousness, and hoped, by care and attention, to save altogether. It would, moreover, have been downright inhumanity to have left the unhappy woman with her companions, for she could not have followed them throughout the long journey necessary in order to regain their own country, and she would have died of hunger and sickness in the midst of the desert. Our two Arab interpreters improvised a sort of litter, on which they laid her, themselves undertaking the task of carrying her.

"We started off, and I am bound to admit that the majority of the negroes left off feasting to give us a few parting cheers. Several of them, indeed, escorted us for a considerable time, yelling frantically all the way; but I am constrained to record also that if they did come near us and kiss our hands and our garments, they at the same time indulged our prisoners with a pretty liberal allowance of the leathern strap they knew so well. The old chief, in spite of all our efforts, was the recipient of most of their attentions, and they did their best to pay him back in one hour all they had received from him in two months.

"What would become of all these people, so unexpectedly restored by us to liberty? Our interpreters told us that they had advised many of them to go to Khartoum, where we might meet them again and take them into our employ, if, as was very probable, we should form there a large caravan for our explorations southwards.

"After getting well away from them we lost no time in taking the chains and yokes off our prisoners, and we, in so doing, merely told them that, unless they felt a particular vocation in connection with pistol bullets, they had better keep quiet.

"Why all these precautions? you will say. Had we made up our minds to reduce these men to slavery? No, certainly not; they had disgusted us so much that their society was unbearable. But their restoration to liberty might, possibly, lead to their again taking a fancy to their former slaves, and, should they fall on the latter in the midst of their feasting and revelry, a number, if not all, would speedily be recaptured. Then it must be borne in mind that these men looked upon us as robbers and highwaymen, who had attacked a perfectly legitimate caravan, and had plundered respectable traders.

"They never gave a thought to what we had done for them. They said, and so far they were right, that we should never have had to protect them if, instead of attacking them, we had allowed them to pursue the even tenour of their way.

"And do not imagine, my dear Pommerelle, that all the world will approve of our conduct. There are, even in Europe, plenty of persons inclined to laud the sweets of slavery and to maintain that the slave-traders confer a great boon on the blacks in rescuing them from their own wretched country and landing them in Turkey, where they certainly enjoy a greater amount of ease and comfort than they can do at home.

"Without inflicting any lengthy arguments on you, I will commence by saying that the regions inhabited by the negroes are wretched, principally because the interest of the slave-dealers lies in perpetually fomenting in them civil war. I will add that out of every three hundred slaves dragged from their homes, scarcely one-third reach the, comparatively speaking, civilized country alluded to, and that the remainder are left to rot in the desert, victims of fatigue, exhaustion, and disease.

"Looking at the question from an elevated point of view, I will sum up in these words—Slavery is a disgrace, is contrary to all the laws of morality, and ought to be opposed in every possible way and destroyed. There you have my sentiments, frankly and concisely expressed, and they are the more worthy of respect, seeing that if I fall back upon my ancestors I find in my maternal great-uncle, the Count de Chabanne, one who was, before the Revolution, the largest slave-holder in St. Domingo. My memory also recalls the fact that I was born in a French colony, Guadaloupe, where slavery was in full force, and that the emancipation, proclaimed by Lamartine, in 1848, and decreed by the Provisional Government, deprived me of the greater portion of my revenues, a circumstance which I cannot regret.

"Without re-entering Matamma, we made direct for the Nile, where we found our vessel, and towards ten o'clock at night we set our prisoners down gently on the bank, after having distributed some eatables amongst them, so that they should have nothing wherewith to reproach us. I could not feel any uneasiness as to the fate of these men; they would not be long before they resumed their usual calling, about which Omar and Ali had, during the return journey, given us some curious information. Any penniless adventurer, by the mere mention of his intention to form a slave-catching expedition, can easily borrow in Egypt the funds necessary for his enterprise. He then engages a number of villains, renegades of all religions, runaway criminals, escaped convicts, blackguards of every hue, the scum of every country, and with this retinue he sails up the Nile as far as Gondokoro; there he disembarks, and proceeds into the interior until he arrives at some negro village. Here he displays his glass beads, necklaces, bracelets, and all the countless trifles with which he has provided himself to excite the cupidity of the negroes. The latter hasten to make their purchases, and offer in payment their current coin. 'No,' say the traders, 'we want slaves in exchange for our wares.' The buyers have none to give, but that difficulty is soon overcome. The chief of the tribe proposes a razzia into the neighbouring district, and, as this is the sole object the traders have in view, the offer is accepted. The village selected for attack is surrounded and set on fire, the herds of cattle are taken possession of, and violent hands are laid on all the women, children, and such men as have not fallen in the fight.

"Then comes the dividing of the spoil; the glass beads, &c., are generously handed over to the negroes, whilst the traders keep the slaves for their own share, subsequently either selling them to other adventurers, who take them to the south-east, to the great slave-market of Zanzibar, or leading them, at their own risk and peril, further north to the countries where Islamism and slavery prevail.

"Do not ask me for anything more now, my dear fellow, for after so eventful a day I am in a hurry to find a quiet nook on board our vessel, wherein, with a quiet conscience, I may obtain a well-earned repose."