ugust, the survivors of the shipwreck reached
the capital of California. Ah! if old Tom and his companions had only
been with them!

What shall we say of Dick Sand and of Hercules? One became the son,
the other the friend, of the family. James Weldon knew how much he
owed to the young novice, how much to the brave black. He was happy;
and it was fortunate for him that Negoro had not reached him, for
he would have paid the ransom of his wife and child with his whole
fortune. He would have started for the African coast, and, once there,
who can tell to what dangers, to what treachery, he would have been
exposed?

A single word about Cousin Benedict. The very day of his arrival the
worthy savant, after having shaken hands with Mr. Weldon, shut
himself up in his study and set to work, as if finishing a sentence
interrupted the day before. He meditated an enormous work on the
"Hexapodes Benedictus," one of the _desiderata_ of entomological
science.

There, in his study, lined with insects, Cousin Benedict's first
action was to find a microscope and a pair of glasses. Great heaven!
What a cry of despair he uttered the first time he used them to study
the single specimen furnished by the African entomology!

The "Hexapodes Benedictus" was not a hexapode! It was a common spider!
And if it had but six legs, instead of eight, it was simply because
the two front legs were missing! And if they were missing, these two
legs, it was because, in taking it, Hercules had, unfortunately,
broken them off! Now, this mutilation reduced the pretended "Hexapodes
Benedictus" to the condition of an invalid, and placed it in the
most ordinary class of spiders--a fact which Cousin Benedict's
near-sightedness had prevented him from discovering sooner. It gave
him a fit of sickness, from which, however, he happily recovered.

Three years after, little Jack was eight years old, and Dick Sand made
him repeat his lessons, while working faithfully at his own studies.
In fact, hardly was he at home when, realizing how ignorant he was,
he had commenced to study with a kind of remorse--like a man who, for
want of knowledge, finds himself unequal to his task.

"Yes," he often repeated; "if, on board of the 'Pilgrim,' I had
known all that a sailor should know, what misfortunes we would have
escaped!"

Thus spoke Dick Sand. At the age of eighteen he finished with
distinction his hydrographical studies, and, honored with a brevet by
special favor, he