s. Weldon and
little Jack were dead. She, her son, and Cousin Benedict were then in
Kazounde.

After the assault on the ant-hill, they had been taken away beyond the
camp on the Coanza by Harris and Negoro, accompanied by a dozen native
soldiers.

A palanquin, the "kitanda" of the country, received Mrs. Weldon and
little Jack. Why such care on the part of such a man as Negoro? Mrs.
Weldon was afraid to explain it to herself.

The journey from the Counza to Kazounde was made rapidly and without
fatigue. Cousin Benedict, on whom trouble seemed to have no effect,
walked with a firm step. As he was allowed to search to the right and
to the left, he did not think of complaining. The little troop, then,
arrived at Kazounde eight days before Ibn Hamis's caravan. Mrs.
Weldon was shut up, with her child and Cousin Benedict, in Alvez's
establishment.

Little Jack was much better. On leaving the marshy country, where he
had taken the fever, he gradually became better, and now he was
doing well. No doubt neither he nor his mother could have borne the
hardships of the caravan; but owing to the manner in which they had
made this journey, during which they had been given a certain amount
of care, they were in a satisfactory condition, physically at least.

As to her companions, Mrs. Weldon had heard nothing of them. After
having seen Hercules flee into the forest, she did not know what had
become of him. As to Dick Sand, as Harris and Negoro were no longer
there to torture him, she hoped that his being a white man would
perhaps spare him some bad treatment. As to Nan, Tom, Bat, Austin, and
Acteon, they were blacks, and it was too certain that they would be
treated as such. Poor people! who should never have trodden that land
of Africa, and whom treachery had just cast there.

When Ibn Hamis's caravan had arrived at Kazounde, Mrs. Weldon, having
no communication with the outer world, could not know of the fact:
neither did the noises from the _lakoni_ tell her anything. She did
not know that Tom and his friends had been sold to a trader from
Oujiji, and that they would soon set out. She neither knew of Harris's
punishment, nor of King Moini Loungga's death, nor of the royal
funeral ceremonies, that had added Dick Sand to so many other victims.
So the unfortunate woman found herself alone at Kazounde, at the
trader's mercy, in Negoro's power, and she could not even think of
dying in order to escape him, because her child was wit