The people of Dendi had been very far from pleased at the Baud-Decœur expedition going to Say, and when our fellow-countrymen started to return to the coast, by way of the banks of the river, the general opinion was that they ought to be attacked. Fortunately the elders of the various communities were too prudent to sanction this, and their counsels succeeded in curbing the impatience of the hotheaded, but at Tombutu the chief had just died, and the young warriors, deprived of his advice when it was most needed, did fall upon the French, getting the worst of it. Though Madecali had really had nothing to do with the skirmish its people were afraid of our vengeance, or at least of a demand from us for compensation, and the first question Soulé put to me was, “Are you the same Frenchmen as came here last year?” I had been promised a guide, but he did not appear, and our palaver grew more and more constrained. I had begun by a distribution of presents, and Soulé had already received a velvet burnous, a red _bubu_, and two pieces of Guinea cloth, to distribute among the notables of his village, but I now stopped my largesse, declaring that the other presents were at the bottom of the hold: we must be quiet if we were to get them out, and it was impossible to do so with such a crowd about us. They should be handed over, I added, to an accredited messenger from the chief, whom he would be good enough to send with the promised guide. Tableau! Soulé, who from the specimens he had seen of them, knew that our goods were just what he wanted, was eager for more of them. He replied that he had no one he could send for the rest of the presents, to which I retaliated that I had said my last word. To change the subject, the chief now asked me if I would not have my guns fired off in his honour, as I had in that of the chiefs of Kompa, Goruberi, and Tenda, so that his wives left behind in the village might hear them. I saw no reason why I should say no, so I had ten rounds fired from an 86-pounder at once, which the old fellow did not seem to like much. I followed this up with a round from the machine gun, and he evidently wished himself anywhere else. I completed the sensation by showing off what I could do with my revolver, and this completely finished him off. It was too much for his courage; he named a man to act as guide at once, and made a rapid exit from the camp. We also got rid of the crowd, but for five or six men, who, not being able to get a place in any canoes, waited in the hope that we would take them on with us.