Our visitors then withdrew, and we waited four hours longer without news. At the end of that time the same negroes reappeared, to tell me that Madidu was then in the village with a large retinue (I greatly doubted the truth of this), and was at that moment consulting with his principal advisers. But, they added, to prove your good intentions towards the natives, go to the island. That will also show that you mean no harm. Madidu’s envoys will come to you there. I preferred yielding to this pressing invitation to go than acting in a high-handed manner. Moreover, I was not sorry to put a little distance between myself and the Tuaregs, for it was very evident that in any discussion about us nine out of ten would vote for attacking us, and in our island we should be perfectly safe from surprise. We should see what to-morrow brought forth. We estimated the number of warriors now assembled on the bank at several thousand; it was a very different matter from the gathering of the Tademeket and Tenger Eguedeche higher up stream. We set sail, therefore, and when night fell we were camped in our new position. In memory of our old and valued friend Gauthiot, who, as I have related, had defended our expedition from all the detractors in France who would have jeopardized its success, I named after him this little corner of earth in the river, our river, where our fate was really to be decided. If I said that I slept peacefully and well that night I do not suppose any one would believe me. To face tangible dangers in a struggle with nature or with one’s fellow men, greater or less courage is required, but what we had to do now was to meet such hidden risks, as the miner who goes to his work, not knowing at what moment he may be suffocated, blown up, or crushed to death. Even the miner, however, gets accustomed to the risk he runs, but what no one ever becomes used to is the long mental fatigue of the responsibility of knowing that one mischosen word, perhaps even one wrongly translated word, will be enough to doom to destruction all those who have joined their fortunes with yours with full confidence in you, for whom you are all and everything for the time being. [Illustration: PALAVER AT GAO.] Father Hacquart slept no better than I did that anxious night. Would he have slept if I had let him retire to his couch? Who can tell? I needed his counsel and his experience, so we neither of us closed an eye, for we discussed the situation, and what we should say, the next day, for the whole night. The result of our conference was, that we resolved to do the best we could under whatever circumstances might arise, for to foresee them was impossible; in a word, as sailors say, “Trim our sails according to the weather.”