In these waters, considerable quantities of little fish of the silurus species.  The natives catch them by billions in wickers and sell them to the caravans.

Impossible to find a place to camp for the night.  We see no limit to the inundated plain.  We must march in the dark.  To-morrow many slaves will be missing from the convoy.  What misery!  When one falls, why get up again?  A few moments more under these waters, and all would be finished.  The overseer’s stick would not reach you in the darkness.

Yes, but Mrs. Weldon and her son!  I have not the right to abandon them.  I shall resist to the end.  It is my duty.

Dreadful cries are heard in the night.  Twenty soldiers have torn some branches from resinous trees whose branches were above water.  Livid lights in the darkness.

This is the cause of the cries I heard.  An attack of crocodiles; twelve or fifteen of those monsters have thrown themselves in the darkness on the flank of the caravan.

Women and children have been seized and carried away by the crocodiles to their “pasture lands”—­so Livingstone calls those deep holes where this amphibious animal deposits its prey, after having drowned it, for it only eats it when it has reached a certain degree of decomposition.

I have been rudely grazed by the scales of one of these crocodiles.  An adult slave has been seized near me and torn from the fork that held him by the neck.  The fork was broken.  What a cry of despair!  What a howl of grief!  I hear it still!

May 7th and 8th.—­The next day they count the victims.  Twenty slaves have disappeared.

At daybreak I look for Tom and his companions.  God be praised! they are living.  Alas! ought I to praise God?  Is one not happier to be done with all this misery!

Tom is at the head of the convoy.  At a moment when his son Bat made a turn, the fork was presented obliquely, and Tom was able to see me.

I search in vain for old Nan.  Is she in the central group? or has she perished during that frightful night?

The next day, passed the limit of the inundated plain, after twenty-four hours in the water.  We halt on a hill.  The sun dries us a little.  We eat, but what miserable food!  A little tapioca, a few handfuls of maize.  Nothing but the troubled water to drink.  Prisoners extended on the ground—­how many will not get up!

No! it is not possible that Mrs. Weldon and her son have passed through so much misery!  God would be so gracious to them as to have them led to Kazounde by another road.  The unhappy mother could not resist.

New case of small-pox in the caravan; the “ndoue,” as they say.  The sick could not be able to go far.  Will they abandon them?

May 9th.—­They have begun the march again at sunrise.  No laggards.  The overseer’s whip has quickly raised those overcome by fatigue or sickness.  Those slaves have a value; they are money.  The agents will not leave them behind while they have strength enough to march.