We had other things to worry us. To begin with, the _Aube_ leaked terribly. We had to take everything out of the hold, and we tried to stop up the fissures in her bottom, through which the water poured, with lumps of putty, but it was not much good, and throughout the whole of the rest of the voyage we were haunted with the fear of losing one of our vessels, or at least of having to leave her behind us. Then one of my coolies, Semba-Sumaré, was very ill with pneumonia, and Dr. Taburet was afraid he would die. He was delirious, but fortunately quiet enough. Still he required careful watching, lest in an access of fever he should be guilty of some mad freak. We remained where we were for the whole of the 16th, and our friend R’alli came on board to tell us, in his comically eloquent way, that Sakhaui really would come to see us. He was very uneasy about us, pulled this way and that, many of his advisers urging him not to visit us, but he, R’alli, would make him do so! There might have been something in what R’alli said, and although I did not much believe in his influence over the chief, I gave him a nice present. It never does to be niggardly with these natives, one must advertise oneself well by generous gifts. In the evening the number of visitors increased yet more, and we saw a good many people who were interesting to us, because they or their relations had been mentioned by Dr. Barth, including the son of El Waghdu, who had been the German traveller’s faithful friend on his journey, and Kongu, a little Tuareg who had been very fond of him, and who, in spite of certain sad presentiments he had had of a terrible fate, had survived until now, so many years after the death of the Doctor himself. Every one still talked of that doctor under the name of Abdul Kerim, every one still remembered him, and once more I must bear witness, as I shall have to do yet again and again, to the wonderful impression left behind him by the genial German. [Illustration: SAKHAUI’S ENVOYS.] Whilst we were chatting with our visitors some envoys from Sakhaui arrived, bringing back the presents I had given to R’alli in the morning. “He is a low impostor,” the chief had told his messengers to tell me; “I am ashamed of his behaviour, for he never ceases to talk, without rhyme or reason, and he promised to give us a cow as a present when every one knows he has not got one.”