what he has had the indiscretion to come to see in Africa."

Would not one say, to hear them, the rascals, that they were speaking
like honest merchants whose affairs were momentarily cramped by a
commercial crisis? Who would believe that, instead of sacks of coffee
or casks of sugar, they were talking of human beings to export like
merchandise? These traders have no other idea of right or wrong. The
moral sense is entirely lacking in them, and if they had any, how
quickly they would lose it among the frightful atrocities of the
African slave trade.

But where Harris was right, was when he said that civilization was
gradually penetrating those savage countries in the wake of those
hardy travelers, whose names are indissoluble linked to the
discoveries of Equatorial Africa. At the head, David Livingstone,
after him, Grant, Speke, Burton, Cameron, Stanley, those heroes will
leave imperishable names as benefactors of humanity.

When their conversation reached that point, Harris knew what the last
two years of Negoro's life had been. The trader Alvez's old agent, the
escaped prisoner from the Loanda penitentiary, reappeared the same as
Harris had always known him, that is, ready to do anything. But what
plan Negoro intended to take in regard to the shipwrecked from the
"Pilgrim," Harris did not yet know. He asked his accomplice about it.

"And now," said he, "what are you going to do with those people?"

"I shall make two parties of them," replied Negoro, like a man whose
plan had been long formed, "those whom I shall sell as slaves, and
those whom----"

The Portuguese did not finish, but his ferocious physiognomy spoke
plainly enough.

"Which will you sell?" asked Harris.

"Those blacks who accompany Mrs. Weldon," replied Negoro. "Old Tom is
not perhaps of much value, but the others are four strong fellows, who
will bring a high price in the Kazounde market."

"I well believe it, Negoro," replied Harris. "Four negroes, well made,
accustomed to work, have very little resemblance to those brutes which
come to us from the interior. Certainly, you will sell them at a high
price. Slaves, born in America, and exported to the markets of Angola;
that is rare merchandise! But," added the American, "you have not told
me if there was any money on board the 'Pilgrim.'"

"Oh! a few hundred dollars only, which I have succeeded in saving.
Fortunately, I count on certain returns."

"Which, then, comrade?" asked Harris, with