As soon as they arrived at the camp, Dick Sand and his companions had been treated as slaves.  Old Tom, his son Austin, Acteon, poor Nan, negroes by birth, though they did not belong to the African race, were treated like captive natives.  After they were disarmed, in spite of the strongest resistance, they were held by the throat, two by two, by means of a pole six or seven feet long, forked at each end, and closed by an iron rod.  By this means they were forced to march in line, one behind the other, unable to get away either to the right or to the left.  As an over precaution, a heavy chain was attached to their waists.  They had their arms free, to carry burdens, their feet free to march, but they could not use them to flee.  Thus they were going to travel hundreds of miles under an overseer’s lash.  Placed apart, overcome by the reaction which followed the first moments of their struggle against the negroes, they no longer made a movement.  Why had they not been able to follow Hercules in his flight?  And, meanwhile, what could they hope for the fugitive?  Strong as he was, what would become of him in that inhospitable country, where hunger, solitude, savage beasts, natives, all were against him?  Would he not soon regret his companion’s fate?  They, however, had no pity to expect from the chiefs of the caravan, Arabs or Portuguese, speaking a language they could not understand.  These chiefs only entered into communication with their prisoners by menacing looks and gestures.

Dick Sand himself was not coupled with any other slave.  He was a white man, and probably they had not dared to inflict the common treatment on him.  Unarmed, he had his feet and hands free, but a driver watched him especially.  He observed the camp, expecting each moment to see Negoro or Harris appear.  His expectation was in vain.  He had no doubt, however, that those two miserable men had directed the attack against the ant-hill.

Thus the thought came to him that Mrs. Weldon, little Jack, and Cousin Benedict had been led away separately by orders from the American or from the Portuguese.  Seeing neither one nor the other, he said to himself that perhaps the two accomplices even accompanied their victims.  Where were they leading them?  What would they do with them?  It was his most cruel care.  Dick Sand forgot his own situation to think only of Mrs. Weldon and hers.

The caravan, camped under the gigantic sycamore, did not count less than eight hundred persons, say five hundred slaves of both sexes, two hundred soldiers, porters, marauders, guards, drivers, agents, or chiefs.

These chiefs were of Arab and Portugese origin.  It would be difficult to imagine the cruelties that these inhuman beings inflicted on their captives.  They struck them without relaxation, and those who fell exhausted, not fit to be sold, were finished with gunshots or the knife.  Thus they hold them by terror.  But the result of this system is, that on the arrival of the caravan, fifty out of a hundred slaves are missing from the trader’s list.  A few may have escaped, but the bones of those who died from torture mark out the long routes from the interior to the coast.