Under the most favorable circumstances, it would last three or four months. Negoro's going and returning would require at least that time.
Mrs. Weldon's intention was, not to leave the factory.
Her child, Cousin Benedict, and she, were comparatively safe there.
Halima's good care softened the severity of this sequestration a little.
Besides, it was probable that the trader would not permit her to leave the establishment.
The great premium that the prisoner's ransom would procure him, made it well worth while to guard her carefully.
It was even fortunate that Alvez was not obliged to leave Kazounde to visit his two other factories of Bihe and Cassange.
Coimbra was going to take his place in the expedition on new razzias or raids.
There was no motive for regretting the presence of that drunkard.
Above all, Negoro, before setting out, had given Alvez the most urgent commands in regard to Mrs. Weldon.
It was necessary to watch her closely. They did not know what had become of Hercules.
If he had not perished in that dreadful province of Kazounde, perhaps he would attempt to get near the prisoner and snatch her from Alvez's hands.
The trader perfectly understood a situation which ciphered itself out by a good number of dollars.
He would answer for Mrs. Weldon as for his own body.
So the monotonous life of the prisoner during the first days after her arrival at the factory, was continued.
What passed in this enclosure reproduced very exactly the various acts of native existence outside.
Alvez lived like the other natives of Kazounde.
The women of the establishment worked as they would have done in the town, for the greater comfort of their husbands or their masters.
Their occupations included preparing rice with heavy blows of the pestle in wooden mortars, to perfect decortication; cleansing and winnowing maize, and all the manipulations necessary to draw from it a granulous substance which serves to compose that potage called "mtyelle" in the country; the harvesting of the sorgho, a kind of large millet, the ripening of which had just been solemnly celebrated at this time; the extraction of that fragrant oil from the "mpafon" drupes, kinds of olives, the essence of which forms a perfume sought for by the natives; spinning of the cotton, the fibers of which are twisted by means of a spindle a foot and a half long, to which the spinners impart a rapid rotation; the fabrication of bark stuffs with the mallet; the extraction from the tapioca roots, and the preparation of the earth for the different products of the country, cassava, flour that they make from the manioc beans, of which the pods, fifteen inches long, named "mositsanes," grow on trees twenty feet high; arachides intended to make oil, perennial peas of a bright blue, known under the name of "tchilobes," the flowers of which relieve the slightly insipid taste of the milk of sorgho; native coffee, sugar canes, the juice of which is reduced to a syrup; onions, Indian pears, sesamum, cucumbers, the seeds of which are roasted like chestnuts; the preparation of fermented drinks, the "malofori," made with bananas, the "pombe" and other liquors; the care of the domestic animals, of those cows that only allow themselves to be milked in the presence of their little one or of a stuffed calf; of those heifers of small race, with short horns, some of which have a hump; of those goats which, in the country where their flesh serves for food, are an important object of exchange, one might say current money like the slave; finally, the feeding of the birds, swine, sheep, oxen, and so forth.
This long enumeration shows what rude labors fall on the feeble sex in those savage regions of the African continent.
During this time the men smoke tobacco or hemp, chase the elephant or the buffalo, and hire themselves to the traders for the raids.
The harvest of maize or of slaves is always a harvest that takes place in fixed seasons.
Of those various occupations, Mrs. Weldon only saw in Alvez's factory the part laid on the women.
Sometimes she stopped, looking at them, while the slaves, it must be said, only replied to her by ugly grimaces.
A race instinct led these unfortunates to hate a white woman, and they had no commiseration for her in their hearts.
Halima alone was an exception, and Mrs. Weldon, having learned certain words of the native language, was soon able to exchange a few sentences with the young slave.
Little Jack often accompanied his mother when she walked in the inclosure; but he wished very much to go outside.
There was, however, in an enormous baobab, marabout nests, formed of a few sticks, and "souimangas" nests, birds with scarlet breasts and throats, which resemble those of the tissirms; then "widows," that strip the thatch for the benefit of their family; "calaos," whose song was agreeable, bright gray parrots with red tails, which, in the Manyema, are called "rouss," and give their name to the chiefs of the tribes; insectivorous "drougos," similar to gray linnets, with large, red beaks.
Here and there also fluttered hundreds of butterflies of different species, especially in the neighborhood of the brooks that crossed the factory; but that was rather Cousin Benedict's affair than little Jack's, and the latter regretted greatly not being taller, so as to look over the walls.
Alas! where was his poor friend, Dick Sand—he who had brought him so high up in the "Pilgrim's" masts?
How he would have followed him on the branches of those trees, whose tops rose to more than a hundred feet! What good times they would have had together!
Cousin Benedict always found himself very well where he was, provided insects were not lacking.
Happily, he had discovered in the factory—and he studied as much as he could without magnifying glass or spectacles—a small bee which forms its cells among the worm-holes of the wood, and a "sphex" that lays its eggs in cells that are not its own, as the cuckoo in the nests of other birds.
Mosquitoes were not lacking either, on the banks of the rivulets, and they tattooed him with bites to the extent of making him unrecognizable.
And when Mrs. Weldon reproached him with letting himself be thus devoured by those venomous insects:
"It is their instinct, Cousin Weldon," he replied to her, scratching himself till the blood came; "it is their instinct, and we must not have a grudge against them!"
At last, one day—it was the 17th of June—Cousin Benedict was on the point of being the happiest of entomologists.
But this adventure, which had unexpected consequences, needs to be related with some minuteness.
It was about eleven o'clock in the morning.
An overpowering heat had obliged the inhabitants of the factory to keep in their huts, and one would not even meet a single native in the streets of Kazounde.
Mrs. Weldon was dozing near little Jack, who was sleeping soundly.
Cousin Benedict, himself, suffering from the influence of this tropical temperature, had given up his favorite hunts, which was a great sacrifice for him, for, in those rays of the midday sun, he heard the rustle of a whole world of insects.
He was sheltered, then, at the end of his hut, and there, sleep began to take possession of him in this involuntary siesta.
Suddenly, as his eyes half closed, he heard a humming; this is one of those insupportable buzzings of insects, some of which can give fifteen or sixteen thousand beats of their wings in a second.
"A hexapode!" exclaimed Cousin Benedict, awakened at once, and passing from the horizontal to the vertical position.
There was no doubt that it was a hexapode that was buzzing in his hut.
But, if Cousin Benedict was very near-sighted, he had at least very acute hearing, so acute even that he could recognize one insect from another by the intensity of its buzz, and it seemed to him that this one was unknown, though it could only be produced by a giant of the species.
"What is this hexapode?" Cousin Benedict asked himself.
Behold him, seeking to perceive the insect, which was very difficult to his eyes without glasses, but trying above all to recognize it by the buzzing of its wings.
His instinct as an entomologist warned him that he had something to accomplish, and that the insect, so providentially entered into his hut, ought not to be the first comer.