Companions of Fortune by René Guillot

First published:Les Compagnons de la fortune, 1950 (English translation, 1952); illustrated

Type of work: Adventure tale

Themes: Friendship, jobs and work, and travel

Time of work: The late nineteenth century

Recommended Ages: 15-18

Locale: La Rochelle, France, and the African Ivory Coast

Principal Characters:

• Jean-Marie Falahaut, fifteen, the inheritor of the legend and half the treasure note
• Uncle Angenot, a former crew member of Jean-Marie’s grandfather, who is now the keeper of the tale of the ship, Belle-Aude
• Ahoua, a black nanny, who saved Jean-Marie from drowning and now keeps house for him and Angenot in La Rochelle
• The Crew of the Belle-Aude, a handful of old sailors promised half the treasure by Captain Falahaut, and owners of the other half of the treasure note
• Kokabo, a voluntary prisoner who is the re-teller of the ancient legend of the Queen, the last piece of the puzzle

The Story

Young Jean-Marie’s parents perish in the wreck of the Belle-Aude, his grandfather’s ship. Before his grandfather dies, he tears a treasure note in half and gives half to his grandson’s guardian, Angenot, and half to Santoine, representing any of the surviving crew. Now, reared by Ahoua in La Rochelle, Jean-Marie hears every night from Angenot the tale of the ship, the hidden treasure “of live gold and dead ivory,” and the unfinished business of clearing his grandfather’s name on the books of Dumur, an unsavory shipowner.

Responding to a secret signal (a bottled model of the Belle-Aude in Angenot’s window), the surviving crew gather to renew the hunt for the treasure hinted at in the torn note. Piecing the note together, translating the seventeenth century Spanish (the note originally belonged to Don Miguel, a slave trader), and finally deciphering the clues within, the men determine the location of the treasure. The search for a proper sailing vessel proves fruitless, until an old but serviceable steam vessel is made available to them by Dumur, the same shipowner who sullied Captain Falahaut’s name. This coincidence is viewed by the men as poetic justice; they take the boat, but report it sunk off the coast of South America.

In actuality, they have followed the clues contained in the note and sailed the ship to the mouth of a great African river. When furthur navigation becomes impossible, they enlist a tribe of African natives to tow the boat upstream. At the source of the river the men discover old Kokabo, a native madman without a tongue, who chains himself to a log in order to retell the ancient story of the Golden Queen, a legendary figure, and the last clue needed to find the treasure.

Some months later, the men discover a treasure of ivory tusks hidden in the mud, probably buried there centuries ago by the natives when the white traders never returned. Not only are the dead tusks “worth their weight in gold,” but an accident while hoisting them onto the deck reveals that their hollow roots are also filled with molten gold; a double treasure of “live gold and dead ivory.” Jean-Marie, responsible for fulfilling his grandfather’s agreements, gives his share of the treasure to the shipowner Dumur, in exchange for clearing his grandfather’s name.

Context

Rene Guillot, not unlike Lewis Carroll, was a mathematician who turned his storywriting hobby into a second career. As a member of several literary societies, including Societe des Ecrivains de le Mer (Society of Writers of the Sea), Guillot wrote more than one hundred children’s stories; he was honored for his entire canon as a distinguished contribution to international literature for young people by the Hans Christian Andersen International Children’s Book Medal in 1964.

Companions of Fortune is one of two novels written in 1950 that draw from Guillot’s interest in Africa and especially the African elephant. Sama, prince des elephants (1950; Sama, 1952), which won the Prix Jeunesse in 1950, Sirga, la lionne (1951; Sirga, Queen of the African Bush, 1953), and Ouoro le chimpanze (1951) are better known examples of Guillot’s unique style of animal description, also found in the elephant-hunting scenes of Companions of Fortune, scenes whose realistic detail and sense of immediacy reflect the author’s own personal experiences on the African continent.