Berain is more firmly nailed to his bed by a fierce lumbago than by a steel chain. The poor man, as stiff as a post, cannot make the slightest movement, and we have to feed riim like a child. There's nothing surprising in that. What is surprising is that any of us can move, after yesterday's little outing. All that day I was in no condition to put two ideas together. Today things are a little better but not too good. Still let's try to collect our ideas and to sum things up.

Well, the day before yesterday we had turned in. We were tired out and we were sleeping the sleep of the just, when just before dawn we were awakened by an infernal din. It was the same roaring that had intrigued me three times before, but this time it was ever so much more intense. We opened our eyes but had to close them at once, for we were dazzled by blazing lights seemingly thrown from some distance above us.

We had not recovered from the din and the no less inexplicable brilliance when without warning some men threw themselves on us. We were hustled, thrown down, bound, gagged, and blinded by some sort of bag into which our heads and shoulders were crammed. All this in less time than it takes to write. There's nothing more to be said: it was a masterpiece.

In an instant I was trussed up like a sausage. On my ankles, on my knees, on my wrists which someone had carefully crossed behind my back, were bonds cutting into my flesh. It was lovely!

When I was beginning to realize this pleasant sensation, I heard a voice, in which I recognized the enchanting tones of Lieutenant Lacour saying harshly:

"Are you there, boys?"

Then almost at once, without giving the boys (charming boys, no doubt) time to reply, the same voice added even more roughly:

"The first to move will get a bullet in his head. Come on, you there, let's get going!"

No need to be a doctor of literature to realize that the second speech was meant for us. He's a good one, the excommandant of our escort! Move? It's easy to talk. No, I shall not move, and for a very good reason. But I listen.

At once someone answers the energetic lieutenant: "Heruntersteigen konnen wir hier nicht. Es gibt zu viele Baiime"

Although I can scarcely understand the jargon, I bet this is German. M. Barsac, adept in that craggy language, has since told me that I'd won, and that it means: "We can't come down here, there's too many trees." That's quite likely.

Anyhow, I didn't understand it at the time. But what did strike me was that this Teutonic sentence had been shouted from a distance, I might even say from above.

Scarcely was it said when in the midst of the continual din, a third voice added in the same tones, a howl: "It's necessary to take away your prisoners until the end of the trees."

Well, now it's English! Versed in the language of Shakespeare, I at once realized what this unidiomatic sentence (not I think, spoken by an Englishman)really means: we are to be taken beyond the copse. Then Lieutenant Lacour (I suppose)asks:

"Which way?"

"Towards Kourboussou," cries the stepson of perfidious Albion.

"How far?" asked the lieutenant.

"Circa venti chilometri," yells a fourth voice.

A latinist such as myself can easily guess that these three words are Italian and means about twenty kilometers. Are we in the land of the linguists then, or, at least, in the backwoods of Babel?

However this may be, Lieutenant Lacour replies:

"All right, I'll set off at dawn," and nobody takes any more notice of me. I stay where I am, flat on my back, bound, seeing nothing, hardly able to breathe, in the not over comfortable cowl into which I've been stuffed.

At the lieutenant's reply, the roaring at once doubles its volume, only to decrease in strength and at last die away. In a few minutes it can no longer be heard.

Whatever makes that strange uproar? Of course, my gag keeps me from getting into touch with the others, and it is only to myself that I put the question, to which, naturally, there comes no reply.

Time passes. After an hour or more two men grab hold of me, one by the feet and the other by the shoulders, swing me to and fro for a moment and then throw me like a sack of corn across a saddle, with the pommel digging me in the back, on a horse which sets off at a gallop.

Never had I thought, even in my most fantastic dreams, that I should one day play the part of Mazeppa in the heart of Africa, and I ask you to believe that thinking about the prowess of that Cossack has never kept me awake.

I was wondering if I should end by getting out of it as he did, and if it would be my fate to become hetman of the Bambaras when a half drunken voice, coming from a throat which must have been rinsed with paraffin, said in a way to make the flesh creep:

"Take care, old bloody toad! If you budge, this revolver shall hinder you to begin again."

That's twice that I've been given the same advice, always in the same barbarous English and with the same exquisite politeness. This is luxury!

Around me there's the sound of furious galloping, and sometimes I can hear dull groans; my companions, no doubt, they must be as badly off as I am. Because I'm very badly off, indeed! I'm stifling, and the blood's running to my head.