MISTAKES AND FALSE NEWS 359 natives uniting to attack, trouble you ? Never mind, they will turn out not to be so many after all ; you are used to these rumours now. You have some dreadful rapids in front of you ; you have got to pass them somehow. There are so many, you can't count them. Shall we draw back ? Shall we allow them to check our onward march ? No, no, we shall get used to them. If you take them one by one, you will find that each fresh one is not worse than the last, and that the hundredth is just like the first. You get quite used to them, at least if you do not lose your boats and your life too. Which would be the final getting used to things, the last settling down !

A diavandu and his sister one day presented themselves at the camp. These diavandus, who are the guides and confidants of the people, are everywhere met with amongst the Fulahs. I don't know what trade the sister followed, but this diavandu came to offer us his services. He offered to perform all the usual duties of his office on our behalf, and was ready either to sell us milk, or to act as a spy for us. He was a little fellow, of puny, sickly appearance. We made him drink some quinine dissolved in water, and our people told him that the bitter beverage contained all the talismans of the infernal regions. Certainly the witches in Macbeth never made a philtre nastier than our mixture.

Our diavandu swore by the Koran, without any mental reservations, that he would be faithful to us, and our spells and the grisgiHs we had given him would, he knew, kill him if he were false to us, or betrayed us in any way. Then we sent him to see what was going on in Amadu's camp.

I do not know what eventually became of him, but perhaps if he was false to us the quinine killed him by autosuggestion ; perhaps he was simply suppressed by our enemies, or he may have died a natural death ; anyhow we never saw either him or his sister again.