FROM BUSSA TO THE SEA 493 Then between ourselves and our guide began an animated and certainly very curious colloquy ; astonishment on one side, vehement explanations on the other. What changes in the expressions of the faces of those engaged in the conversation ! What shouts of laughter ! What were they saying? This is what I thought I made out. Seeing our three barges each flying a tricolour flag, and the launch with no colours at all, the English of the Protectorate had thought we had retaliated on the Company by a skilful manoeuvre for the bad turn they had done the French the year before. " The Company," they said, " had intended to confiscate our barges, but they being well manned and well armed, had instead captured the launch and taken her down under the French flag to Wari."

No, I cannot have understood the conversation, I must have dreamed it all ! The English never could have believed us capable of such a thing, and would never have suggested it, even in their own language. And yet !

Who was it told me that the Protectorate and the Company were enemies at heart, and that the English of Wari are always brooding on the damages paid to the Niger traders on account of a certain attack on the people of Brass from Akassa ?

No doubt all these are merely such calumnies as are always circulating.

We shall, all five of us, always remember the welcome we received at Wari from the agents of the Protectorate, and this memory will be the more cherished because a few days after our return to France we heard the terrible news of the death of several of them, who, having gone on a mission to the interior almost unarmed, were massacred by the natives of Benin.

We had the best of receptions at Wari ; the officers