"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.