Here, the children and the adults were hardly clothed with a rag of that bark stuff, produced by certain trees, and called “mbouzon” in the country.  Thus the state of this troop of human beings, women covered with wounds from the “havildars’” whips, children ghastly and meager, with bleeding feet, whom their mothers tried to carry in addition to their burdens, young men closely riveted to the fork, more torturing than the convict’s chain, is the most lamentable that can be imagined.

Yes, the sight of the miserable people, hardly living, whose voices have no sound, ebony skeletons according to Livingstone’s expression, would touch the hearts of wild beasts.  But so much misery did not touch those hardened Arabs nor those Portuguese, who, according to Lieutenant Cameron, are still more cruel.  This is what Cameron says:  “To obtain these fifty women, of whom Alvez called himself proprietor, ten villages had been destroyed, ten villages having each from one hundred to two hundred souls:  a total of fifteen hundred inhabitants.  Some had been able to escape, but the greater part—­almost all—­had perished in the flames, had been killed in defending their families, or had died of hunger in the jungle, unless the beasts of prey had terminated their sufferings more promptly.

“Those crimes, perpetrated in the center of Africa by men who boast of the name of Christians, and consider themselves Portuguese, would seem incredible to the inhabitants of civilized countries.  It is impossible that the government of Lisbon knows the atrocities committed by people who boast of being her subjects.” _—­Tour of the World_.

In Portugal there have been very warm protestations against these assertions of Cameron’s.

It need not be said that, during the marches, as during the halts, the prisoners were very carefully guarded.  Thus, Dick Sand soon understood that he must not even attempt to get away.  But then, how find Mrs. Weldon again?  That she and her child had been carried away by Negoro was only too certain.  The Portuguese had separated her from her companions for reasons unknown as yet to the young novice.  But he could not doubt Negoro’s intervention, and his heart was breaking at the thought of the dangers of all kinds which threatened Mrs. Weldon.

“Ah!” he said to himself, “when I think that I have held those two miserable men, both of them, at the end of my gun, and that I have not killed them!”

This thought was one of those which returned most persistently to Dick Sand’s mind.  What misfortunes the death, the just death of Harris and Negoro might have prevented!  What misery, at least, for those whom these brokers in human flesh were now treating as slaves!

All the horror of Mrs. Weldon’s and little Jack’s situation now represented itself to Dick Sand.  Neither the mother nor the child could count on Cousin Benedict.  The poor man could hardly take care of himself.