large
libations?

"King Loungga is welcome to the market of Kazounde," said the trader.

"I am thirsty," replied the monarch.

"He will take his part in the business of the great 'lakoni,'" added
Alvez.

"Drink!" replied Moini Loungga.

"My friend Negoro is happy to see the King of Kazounde again, after
such a long absence."

"Drink!" repeated the drunkard, whose whole person gave forth a
disgusting odor of alcohol.

"Well, some 'pombe'! some mead!" exclaimed Jose-Antonio Alvez, like a
man who well knew what Moini Loungga wanted.

"No, no!" replied the king; "my friend Alvez's brandy, and for each
drop of his fire-water I shall give him----"

"A drop of blood from a white man!" exclaimed Negoro, after making a
sign to Alvez, which the latter understood and approved.

"A white man! Put a white man to death!" repeated Moini Loungga, whose
ferocious instincts were aroused by the Portuguese's proposition.

"One of Alvez's agents has been killed by this white man," returned
Negoro.

"Yes, my agent, Harris," replied the trader, "and his death must be
avenged!"

"Send that white man to King Massongo, on the Upper Zaire, among the
Assonas. They will cut him in pieces. They will eat him alive. They
have not forgotten the taste of human flesh!" exclaimed Moini Loungga.

He was, in fact, the king of a tribe of man-eaters, that Massongo.
It is only too true that in certain provinces of Central Africa
cannibalism is still openly practised. Livingstone states it in his
"Notes of Travel." On the borders of the Loualaba the Manyemas not
only eat the men killed in the wars, but they buy slaves to devour
them, saying that "human flesh is easily salted, and needs little
seasoning." Those cannibals Cameron has found again among the
Moene-Bongga, where they only feast on dead bodies after steeping them
for several days in a running stream. Stanley has also encountered
those customs of cannibalism among the inhabitants of the Oukonson.
Cannibalism is evidently well spread among the tribes of the center.

But, cruel as was the kind of death proposed by the king for Dick
Sand, it did not suit Negoro, who did not care to give up his victim.

"It was here," said he, "that the white man killed our comrade
Harris."

"It is here that he ought to die!" added Alvez.

"Where you please, Alvez," replied Moini Loungga; "but a drop of
fire-water for a drop of blood!"

"Yes," replied the trader, "fire-water, and you will see tha