Then he ceased to wear it, to save it from these insults. He did not even wind it, so as to give its works a rest, especially as the jolting it had suffered on the voyage, and the great unaccustomed heat, had caused it to indicate the most unlikely hours—in fact to go entirely off the lines. He had put it away tenderly in a box, where he kept his most cherished possessions, his letters, his little souvenirs of home. This box was a fetish box; one of those absolutely sacred boxes such as sailors always possess, and soldiers now and then. Fatou had been formally forbidden to touch it. Nevertheless, this watch attracted her. She had discovered how to open the precious box. When Jean was away, she had found out by herself how to wind up the watch, how to move the hands and make it strike. When she put it close to her ear she would listen to the little cracked tones, with the inquisitive air of an ouistiti which has found a musical box. XXIX At Gadiangué one never experienced a sensation of coolness or physical well-being. Not even the nights were fresh, as in the winter season in Senegal. From morning onwards, the same oppressive, deadly heat prevailed in the shade of that wonderful verdure. From morning onwards, before sunrise, at whatever hour, in whatever place, always, always, the same temperature, the temperature of a vapour bath, moist, overpowering, poisonous, pervading these forests, the abode of chattering monkeys, green parrots, and rare humming birds; these shady paths, these tall dank grasses, where serpents glided. All the heat and heaviness of the equatorial atmosphere was concentrated during the night under the foliage of the great trees; and everywhere the air was steeped in deadly miasma. As had been foreseen, at the end of three months, the country was quiet. The war, the negro massacres were over. The caravans resumed their journeys, bringing to Gadiangué from the depths of Africa gold, ivory, feathers, all the products of the Soudan and the interior of Guinea. And the order having been given to withdraw the reinforcements, a ship was sent to wait for the spahis at the mouth of the river to bring them back to Senegal. Alas, poor fellows! not all of them had survived. Out of twelve that had fared forth, two failed to obey the order of recall; two lay asleep in the hot earth of Gadiangué, victims of fever. But Jean’s hour had not yet come, and one day he set out on his return journey along the route that he had taken three months before in Samba-Boubou’s canoe. XXX This time it was high noon; the spahis were journeying in a Mandinga pirogue, shaded by a moistened awning. They kept close to the dense verdure of the banks, gliding beneath branches and hanging roots of trees for the sake of the scanty shade, warm and danger-haunted, which these cast upon the river. The water seemed stagnant and motionless, heavy as oil, with wisps of fever-impregnated vapour hovering here and there above its polished surface.