Mrs. Weldon was absolutely ignorant of the fate that awaited her.
Harris and Negoro had not addressed a word to her during the whole journey from the Coanza to Kazounde.
Since her arrival, she had not seen either of them again, and she could not leave the enclosure around the rich trader's private establishment.
Is it necessary to say now that Mrs. Weldon had found no help in her large child, Cousin Benedict?
That is understood.
When the worthy savant learned that he was not on the American continent, as he believed, he was not at all anxious to know how that could have happened.
No! His first movement was a gesture of anger.
The insects that he imagined he had been the first to discover in America, those tsetses and others, were only mere African hexapodes, found by many naturalists before him, in their native places.
Farewell, then, to the glory of attaching his name to those discoveries!
In fact, as he was in Africa, what could there be astonishing in the circumstance that Cousin Benedict had collected African insects.
But the first anger over, Cousin Benedict said to himself that the "Land of the Pharaohs"—so he still called it—possessed incomparable entomological riches, and that so far as not being in the "Land of the Incas" was concerned, he would not lose by the change.
"Ah!" he repeated, to himself, and even repeated to Mrs. Weldon, who hardly listened to him, "this is the country of the manticores, those coleopteres with long hairy feet, with welded and sharp wing-shells, with enormous mandibles, of which the most remarkable is the tuberculous manticore.
It is the country of the calosomes with golden ends; of the Goliaths of Guinea and of the Gabon, whose feet are furnished with thorns; of the sacred Egyptian ateuchus, that the Egyptians of Upper Egypt venerated as gods.
It is here that those sphinxes with heads of death, now spread over all Europe, belong, and also those 'Idias Bigote,' whose sting is particularly dreaded by the Senegalians of the coast.
Yes; there are superb things to be found here, and I shall find them, if these honest people will only let me."
We know who those "honest people" were, of whom Cousin Benedict did not dream of complaining.
Besides, it has been stated, the entomologist had enjoyed a half liberty in Negoro's and Harris's company, a liberty of which Dick Sand had absolutely deprived him during the voyage from the coast to the Coanza.
The simple-hearted savant had been very much touched by that condescension.
Finally, Cousin Benedict would be the happiest of entomologists if he had not suffered a loss to which he was extremely sensitive. He still possessed his tin box, but his glasses no longer rested on his nose, his magnifying glass no longer hung from his neck!
Now, a naturalist without his magnifying glass and his spectacles, no longer exists.
Cousin Benedict, however, was destined never to see those two optical attendants again, because they had been buried with the royal manikin.
So, when he found some insect, he was reduced to thrusting it into his eyes to distinguish its most prominent peculiarities.
Ah! it was a great loss to Cousin Benedict, and 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.