Lastly, to protect us from stray bullets, a little earthen wall, some 19 inches high, was erected inside our huts, so that it just covered us when we were lying full length at night. We each did our best to make our own particular niche cosy and ship-shape; but in justice it must be said that Baudry and I were the most successful, for we achieved quite a brilliant result. Baudry’s straw walls were a perfect museum of watches, instruments, medicines, patterns, objects for exchange, and strangest of all—toads! Father Hacquart’s hut was very soberly decorated. Sacred images were nailed to the central stake, and in the little wall—I very nearly said in a corner—was a cornet-à-piston, which was later the joy of the chief of Bussa, but of which I own with the deepest regret we never heard a single note. [Illustration: FORT ARCHINARD.] With Bluzet the keynote of the decorations was art. He had draperies of velvet, a little faded and frayed perhaps, at nine-pence or so a yard, with others of native manufacture. Dr. Taburet’s speciality was medicine-bottles, with a horrible smell of iodoform, or, to be more accurate, of all the disinfectants known to science, and carefully protected in a tin case set on a what-not, a souvenir he never parted with, and often gazed upon, the portrait of the lady he was to marry on his return home. Fili Kanté, a boy in the service of Bluzet, who was not only cook but blacksmith and clown to the expedition, concocted a cocked hat for each of our pointed huts, which after a few tornadoes had passed over them were worn, so to speak, over one ear! The huts of the men were all very much alike, but two on the side of the longest wall were of course rather larger than the others, and of a rectangular shape. Lastly, we had a big watertight store made, in which we stowed away all our valuables. The canvas sail of the foremast of the _Aube_ fastened to the ground served as a kind of shelter for the interpreters, merchants, supernumeraries, etc., and everything was covered over to the best of our ability with our tents, awnings, etc. Well, we were under shelter now, and you know what kind of shelter, from the inclemency of the rainy season and the bullets of the Toucouleurs. We had still storms to expect, and against them we were less well provided. We had already encountered a few of them unprotected. We had had plenty of tents, of course, but we knew from experience, that when we saw the preliminary fantasia of the dried leaves on the left bank beginning, the best thing to do was to put on as quickly as possible all the waterproofs to be had, and go outside to meet the hurricane, turning our backs to it, and at the same time tightening the ropes of the tents. It was really the only way not to get it—I mean the tent, not the hurricane—on our shoulders!