Jules Verne For Children: 16 Incredible Tales of Mystery, Courage & Adventure (Illustrated Edition). Jules Verne
he would have paid a high price for a pair of spectacles, but that article was not current on the lakonis of Kazounde. At all events, Cousin Benedict could go and come in Jose-Antonio Alvez’s establishment. They knew he was incapable of seeking to flee. Besides, a high palisade separated the factory from the other quarters of the city, and it would not be easy to get over it.
But, if it was well enclosed, this enclosure did not measure less than a mile in circumference. Trees, bushes of a kind peculiar to Africa, great herbs, a few rivulets, the thatch of the barracks and the huts, were more than necessary to conceal the continent’s rarest insects, and to make Cousin Benedict’s happiness, at least, if not his fortune. In fact, he discovered some hexapodes, and nearly lost his eyesight in trying to study them without spectacles. But, at least, he added to his precious collection, and laid the foundation of a great work on African entomology. If his lucky star would let him discover a new insect, to which he would attach his name, he would have nothing more to desire in this world!
If Alvez’s establishment was sufficiently large for Cousin Benedict’s scientific promenades, it seemed immense to little Jack, who could walk about there without restraint. But the child took little interest in the pleasures so natural to his age. He rarely quitted his mother, who did not like to leave him alone, and always dreaded some misfortune.
Little Jack often spoke of his father, whom he had not seen for so long. He asked to be taken back to him. He inquired after all, for old Nan, for his friend Hercules, for Bat, for Austin, for Acteon, and for Dingo, that appeared, indeed, to have deserted him. He wished to see his comrade, Dick Sand, again. His young imagination was very much affected, and only lived in those remembrances. To his questions Mrs. Weldon could only reply by pressing him to her heart, while covering him with kisses. All that she could do was not to cry before him.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Weldon had not failed to observe that, if bad treatment had been spared her during the journey from the Coanza, nothing in Alvez’s establishment indicated that there would be any change of conduct in regard to her. There were in the factory only the slaves in the trader’s service. All the others, which formed the object of his trade, had been penned up in the barracks of the tchitoka, then sold to the brokers from the interior.
Now, the storehouses of the establishment were overflowing with stuffs and ivory. The stuffs were intended to be exchanged in the provinces of the center, the ivory to be exported from the principal markets of the continent.
In fact, then, there were few people in the factory. Mrs. Weldon and Jack occupied a hut apart; Cousin Benedict another. They did not communicate with the trader’s servants. They ate together. The food, consisting of goat’s flesh or mutton, vegetables, tapioca, sorgho, and the fruits of the country, was sufficient.
Halima, a young slave, was especially devoted to Mrs. Weldon’s service. In her way, and as she could, she even evinced for her a kind of savage, but certainty sincere, affection.
Mrs. Weldon hardly saw Jose-Antonio Alvez, who occupied the principal house of the factory. She did not see Negoro at all, as he lodged outside; but his absence was quite inexplicable. This absence continued to astonish her, and make her feel anxious at the same time.
“What does he want? What is he waiting for?” she asked herself. “Why has he brought us to Kazounde?”
So had passed the eight days that preceded and followed the arrival of Ibn Hamis’s caravan—that is, the two days before the funeral ceremonies, and the six days that followed.
In the midst of so many anxieties, Mrs. Weldon could not forget that her husband must be a prey to the most frightful despair, on not seeing either his wife or his son return to San Francisco. Mr. Weldon could not know that his wife had adopted that fatal idea of taking passage on board the Pilgrim, and he would believe that she had embarked on one of the steamers of the Trans-Pacific Company. Now, these steamers arrived regularly, and neither Mrs. Weldon, nor Jack, nor Cousin Benedict were on them. Besides, the Pilgrim itself was already overdue at Sun Francisco. As she did not reappear, James W. Weldon must now rank her in the category of ships supposed to be lost, because not heard of.
What a terrible blow for him, when news of the departure of the Pilgrim and the embarkation of Mrs. Weldon should reach him from his correspondents in Auckland! What had he done? Had he refused to believe that his son and she had perished at sea? But then, where would he search? Evidently on the isles of the Pacific, perhaps on the American coast. But never, no never, would the thought occur to him that she had been thrown on the coast of this fatal Africa!
So thought Mrs. Weldon. But what could she attempt? Flee! How? She was closely watched. And then to flee was to venture into those thick forests, in the midst of a thousand dangers, to attempt a journey of more than two hundred miles to reach the coast. And meanwhile Mrs. Weldon was decided to do it, if no other means offered themselves for her to recover her liberty. But, first, she wished to know exactly what Negoro’s designs were.
At last she knew them.
On the 6th of June, three days after the burial of Kazounde’s king, Negoro entered the factory, where he had not yet set foot since his return. He went right to the hut occupied by his prisoner.
Mrs. Weldon was alone. Cousin Benedict was taking one of his scientific walks. Little Jack, watched by the slave Halima, was walking in the enclosure of the establishment.
Negoro pushed open the door of the hut without knocking.
“Mrs. Weldon,” said he, “Tom and his companions have been sold for the markets of Oujiji!”
“May God protect them!” said Mrs. Weldon, shedding tears.
“Nan died on the way, Dick Sand has perished——”
“Nan dead! and Dick!” cried Mrs. Weldon.
“Yes, it is just for your captain of fifteen to pay for Harris’s murder with his life,” continued Negoro. “You are alone in Kazounde, mistress; alone, in the power of the Pilgrims’ old cook—absolutely alone, do you understand?”
What Negoro said was only too true, even concerning Tom and his friends. The old black man, his son Bat, Acteon and Austin had departed the day before with the trader of Oujiji’s caravan, without the consolation of seeing Mrs. Weldon again, without even knowing that their companion in misery was in Kazounde, in Alvez’s establishment. They had departed for the lake country, a journey figured by hundreds of miles, that very few accomplish, and from which very few return.
“Well?” murmured Mrs. Weldon, looking at Negoro without answering.
“Mrs. Weldon,” returned the Portuguese, in an abrupt voice, “I could revenge myself on you for the bad treatment I suffered on board the Pilgrim. But Dick Sand’s death will satisfy my vengeance. Now, mistress, I become the merchant again, and behold my projects with regard to you.”
Mrs. Weldon looked at him without saying a word.
“You,” continued the Portuguese, “your child, and that imbecile who runs after the flies, you have a commercial value which I intend to utilize. So I am going to sell you.”
“I am of a free race,” replied Mrs. Weldon, in a firm tone.
“You are a slave, if I wish it.”
“And who would buy a white woman?”
“A man who will pay for her whatever I shall ask him.”
Mrs. Weldon bent her head for a moment, for she knew that anything was possible in that frightful country.
“You have heard?” continued Negoro.
“Who is this man to whom you will pretend to sell me?” replied Mrs. Weldon.
“To sell you or to re-sell you. At least, I suppose so!” added the Portuguese, sneering.
“The name of this man?” asked Mrs. Weldon.
“This man—he is James W. Weldon, your husband.”