The majority were young natives, some resigned and mute, others giving a few groans.
The wives all dressed as for a fete, and who must perish, had been chosen by the queen.
One of these victims, she who bore the title of second wife, was bent on her hands and knees, to serve as a royal footstool, as she had done in the king's lifetime.
The third wife came to hold up the manikin, while the fourth lay at its feet, in the guise of a cushion.
Before the manikin, at the end of the ditch, a post, painted red, rose from the earth.
To this post was fastened a white man, who was going to be counted also among the victims of these bloody obsequies.
That white man was Dick Sand.
His body, half naked, bore the marks of the tortures he had already suffered by Negoro's orders.
Tied to this post, he waited for death like a man who has no hope except in another life.
However, the moment had not yet arrived when the barricade would be broken.
On a signal from the queen, the fourth wife, she who was placed at the king's feet, was beheaded by Kazounde's executioner, and her blood flowed into the ditch.
It was the beginning of a frightful scene of butchery.
Fifty slaves fell under the executioner's knife. The bed of the river ran waves of blood.
During half an hour the victims' cries mingled with the assistants' vociferations, and one would seek in vain in that crowd for a sentiment of repugnance or of pity.
At last Queen Moini made a gesture, and the barricade that held back the upper waters gradually opened.
By a refinement of cruelty, the current was allowed to filter down the river, instead of being precipitated by an instantaneous bursting open of the dam.
Slow death instead of quick death!
The water first drowned the carpet of slaves which covered the bottom of the ditch.
Horrible leaps were made by those living creatures, who struggled against asphyxia.
They saw Dick Sand, submerged to the knees, make a last effort to break his bonds.
But the water mounted.
The last heads disappeared under the torrent, that took its course again, and nothing indicated that at the bottom of this river was dug a tomb, where one hundred victims had just perished in honor of Kazounde's king.
The pen would refuse to paint such pictures, if regard for the truth did not impose the duty of describing them in their abominable reality.
Man is still there, in those sad countries.
To be ignorant of it is not allowable. * * * * *
CHAPTER XIII.
THE INTERIOR OF A FACTORY.
Harris and Negoro had told a lie in saying that Mrs. Weldon and little Jack were dead.
She, her son, and Cousin Benedict were then in Kazounde.
After the assault on the ant-hill, they had been taken away beyond the camp on the Coanza by Harris and Negoro, accompanied by a dozen native soldiers.
A palanquin, the "kitanda" of the country, received Mrs. Weldon and little Jack.
Why such care on the part of such a man as Negoro?
Mrs. Weldon was afraid to explain it to herself.
The journey from the Counza to Kazounde was made rapidly and without fatigue.
Cousin Benedict, on whom trouble seemed to have no effect, walked with a firm step.
As he was allowed to search to the right and to the left, he did not think of complaining.
The little troop, then, arrived at Kazounde eight days before Ibn Hamis's caravan.
Mrs. Weldon was shut up, with her child and Cousin Benedict, in Alvez's establishment.
Little Jack was much better.
On leaving the marshy country, where he had taken the fever, he gradually became better, and now he was doing well.
No doubt neither he nor his mother could have borne the hardships of the caravan; but owing to the manner in which they had made this journey, during which they had been given a certain amount of care, they were in a satisfactory condition, physically at least.
As to her companions, Mrs. Weldon had heard nothing of them.
After having seen Hercules flee into the forest, she did not know what had become of him.
As to Dick Sand, as Harris and Negoro were no longer there to torture him, she hoped that his being a white man would perhaps spare him some bad treatment.
As to Nan, Tom, Bat, Austin, and Acteon, they were blacks, and it was too certain that they would be treated as such.
Poor people! who should never have trodden that land of Africa, and whom treachery had just cast there.
When Ibn Hamis's caravan had arrived at Kazounde, Mrs. Weldon, having no communication with the outer world, could not know of the fact: neither did the noises from the lakoni tell her anything.
She did not know that Tom and his friends had been sold to a trader from Oujiji, and that they would soon set out.
She neither knew of Harris's punishment, nor of King Moini Loungga's death, nor of the royal funeral ceremonies, that had added Dick Sand to so many other victims.
So the unfortunate woman found herself alone at Kazounde, at the trader's mercy, in Negoro's power, and she could not even think of dying in order to escape him, because her child was with her.