CHAPTER XXXVI.

At day-break on the following morning the drums and horns joyfully sounded the reveille. Neither soldiers nor bearers needed, as was their wont, any rousing to make them leave their couches of dried leaves or straw; they, like everybody else, were in a hurry to make their triumphal entry into Gondokoro. Walinda even, usually so unconcerned and apparently insensible to every noise and every incident of the journey, left her shelter. With her eyes fixed on the tents, she seemed impatiently to await the moment when the Europeans would appear and give the order to start.

M. de Morin was the first person she saw; then, a moment afterwards, M. de Pommerelle, M. Périères, and the two doctors, Delange and Desrioux. A moment afterwards Miss Poles emerged from her sleeping place, having got up before everybody else in order to devote more time to a toilet intended to create a sensation in Gondokoro.

Two tents alone gave no signs of life, those of Madame de Guéran and her husband, separated one from the other by ten yards.

At last, the door of the tent without the flag was seen to move, and at the moment when the rising sun was shedding on all around his earliest rays, and tingeing them with his rosy hues, the Baroness de Guéran stepped forth, smiling, charming as ever, into the light of day.

Walinda, on seeing her, uttered a terrible cry, a cry of mingled rage and terror.

Other cries were heard. They proceeded from Joseph, who, by order of M. de Morin, had entered M. de Guéran's tent to see whether he could do anything for him, and at the same time to tell him that all was in readiness for the march.

He found the unhappy man covered with blood, dead, and cold. The knife, with which the blow had been struck, was still in his heart.

Walinda had been misled; she thought to kill the wife; she had murdered the husband instead.

She did not know that, on the previous evening, Madame de Guéran, fearing that the mist from the neighbouring marshes of Gondokoro might prove injurious to her husband, had given her tent up to him and had passed the night in the one usually occupied by him.

* * * * * *

Eight days after this catastrophe, the Europeans secured two negghers, vessels used on the Upper Nile, and sailed down the river. A third vessel, smaller than the others, carried the coffin of M. de Guéran.

Before embarking, the Europeans, after having settled all accounts in a most liberal manner, parted with their soldiers and bearers, who immediately entered into other engagements with the slave dealers, so plentiful in these parts at that particular season of the year. The servants alone were retained. Nassar, whose devotion and intelligence had been so valuable, and the two Arab interpreters, Omar and Ali, wished to accompany their masters as far as Cairo.

They had not been afloat for more than a few hours, Gondokoro was still in sight, and the vessels, compelled to tack, were making but slow progress, when M. de Morin thought he saw in the middle of the river a dead body being carried down by the current. He at once got into a boat, and, by dint of hard rowing, discovered that it was the body of Walinda. The splendid corpse, on which death had not yet commenced its work of destruction, which it still respected, floated on the top of the water, gilded by the beams of the setting sun.

The Queen, in despair at having spared her rival and killed the man she loved, had taken advantage of the consternation throughout the camp to escape. She had, no doubt, wandered for some days along the banks of the river, and then plunged beneath its waters.

In death she still followed the caravan and the coffin of her lover.

At Khartoum the Europeans made a very short stay, at the commencement of April. 1874, for the purpose of conferring with Colonel Chaillé Long, chief of the staff to General Gordon. In exchange for the news from Europe which he gave them, he obtained from MM. Desrioux and de Pommerelle information concerning the Uganda territory and its king, M'tesa, to whom he was about to pay a visit.

Nothing of importance occurred during the long voyage down the Nile; all the members of the party kept aloof from each other, wrapped up in themselves, alone with their reminiscences and their thoughts. Advantage was taken of this inaction, following so closely on so agitated a life, to collect and arrange the notes of the expedition, and occasionally to admire the new countries stretching out to the horizon.

Madame de Guéran, secluded in a cabin in the after part of the vessel, appeared very seldom. She was, perhaps, reproaching herself for her harshness towards him who was no more, and for the words which had escaped her during her interview with M. Delange. She forgot all the faults of her husband in remembering only the indomitable courage and resolution of the great explorer.

Dr. Delange had also lost some of his light-heartedness, and he felt acutely the sole reproach addressed to him by M. de Morin. "Your admiration for African women, my dear friend," said the leader of the expedition to him, "has cost a man's life."

At Cairo the residue of the Nubians, the Soudan women, Nassar, and the Arabs took their departure, and all these faithful servants might very well exist for a long time on the handsome presents which were made to them.

The little European colony, left now to itself, after having embarked at Port Said, in the month of June, on board a steamer belonging to the _Messageries Maritimes_, arrived at Paris without any further delay.

Then came more adieux. Miss Poles said good-bye to her companions, who, although they had often made fun of her, fully appreciated her goodness, her devotion, and her courage. When the moment of departure arrived, and she had to tear herself away from the four men whom she had loved one by one, for whom she had burned with equal ardour, she forgot her latest preference for M. de Pommerelle and enfolded the whole lot in one embrace. From the arms of M. Périères she passed to those of M. de Morin, to fall into the embrace of M. Delange, who handed her over to the Count de Pommerelle. The Kings Munza and Kadjoro were alone wanting in this all-round embrace; if they had been present the _fête_ would have been complete, and Miss Poles would have bestowed one huge, universal kiss on those she had loved so well.

After having wiped her tear-dimmed spectacles, and thanked Madame de Guéran, who had just secured an independance for her during the remainder of her life, she betook herself to her beloved England, where she now indulges in the "cup which cheers but not inebriates" in the society of her friend, the confidant of her most secret thoughts, the sole depository of her famous adventures amongst the Thouaregs.

The faithful Joseph has not left, his master having too much need of him. M. de Morin is, if one may be allowed to say so, the living crown of Joseph's glory, the landmark of his courage. A dozen times a day the valet points out his young master to the servants and tradesmen of the neighbourhood, saying to them at the same time. "You see that young fellow over there? The Arabs were going to shoot him, but I rescued him. The Niam-Niam wanted to eat him, I offered myself as a sacrifice. The amazons were making ready to massacre him, I delivered him out of their hands." All the feats of arms performed by M. de Morin were inscribed on Joseph's record of service. History is often written thus, the parts being reversed, and the truly great are swallowed up by the really small.

The various Geographical Societies of Europe did more justice to the de Guéran expedition, for although at first they received with a certain reserve the notes sent to them by an unknown explorer like M. Périères, they, in the course of time, officially accepted his discoveries, and replaced the words "unexplored regions" on their maps by the names of the Domondoos, the Maleggas, and the Walindis. Every day, moreover, some fresh traveller appears to confirm these discoveries, and quite lately, in the course of the year 1876, M. Gessi, one of Gordon's lieutenants, reported the existence of a second arm of the Nile, issuing, like its fellow, from the Albert-Nyanza, flowing westwards, and, according to the natives, rejoining the great river above Gondokoro. This is the arm of the Nile which M. Desrioux discovered and pointed out in 1874.

* * * * * *

Eighteen months elapsed without Madame de Guéran putting off her weeds, or showing any sign of marrying again.

"Why on earth does not she marry her dear doctor?" said M. de Morin one day to M. Delange. "They adore each other! That, alas! is easily seen, and I know the Baroness. She is just as incapable of shortening the term of her widowhood as she would be of breaking her marriage vows. But I wish she would put an end to this state of things, and betake herself, as soon as possible, to the priest and the mayor."

"My dear fellow," replied Delange, "Périères last week said almost the same thing in the same words, but they were, like yours, so full of bitterness that I dared not repeat them to Madame de Guéran. If she were to hear either of you, so far from making up her mind, as you want her to do, she would wait still longer."

"According to you, her scruples and her delicacy as regards us are the real causes of the delay?"

"Yes, she wants to let time heal your wounds; she has so sincere a friendship for both of you that she would not wound you for the world."

"Then tell her, please, that we shall not have the sorrow of knowing even the date of her wedding. Our first journey has whetted our appetites; the feverish longing for discovery has taken possession of Périères, de Pommerelle, and myself, and in a few weeks we shall start for western Africa. Following the example of the brothers Lander, we shall follow the course of the Congo, and proceed, in a north-easterly direction, towards Lake Tanganyika. We are in earnest, you see, and Madame de Guéran may resume her freedom of action. We are going to travel without her, and consequently she has a right to marry without us."

* * * * * *

Two months after this conversation Laura de Guéran became Madame Desrioux. The newly-married couple have retired to a villa on the borders of Lake Como, whose picturesque shores recall to their minds the Albert-Nyanza, near which they refound each other.

M. Delange and Joseph alone of all our heroes remain in Paris. The former is devoting himself to his profession, which does not prevent him, at midnight when his work is over, playing a rubber of whist, or making one at a baccarat table in his club. He it is, so report says, whom Gondinet and Felix Cohen have hit off in the second act of their capital play "_Le Club_." The doctor still dreams occasionally of the women of Africa, but he makes no secret of his opinion that several of his Parisian patients are their superiors.

Joseph betrayed a certain amount of indifference when the question of again setting out for Africa was mooted before him, and it is, moreover, quite possible that M. de Morin, with good reason for it, did not make a point of his accompanying him. The trusty valet is a valet no longer. He is a gentleman of independent means, thanks to the generosity of his master, and the sale of thirty elephant's tusks.

As for ourselves, our task is ended, and with it this lengthy history, which has only one merit—that of being entirely exact from a geographical point of view, and with regard to African customs. We have thought that our readers might be interested in being taken far away from Paris, and in having brought before them, in a possibly attractive guise, laborious researches, interesting discoveries, and the mysteries of a new world.

THE END.