He has followed the caravan. Harris and Negoro took away Mrs. Weldon, Jack, and Mr. Benedict. Where? I know not, if they are not here at Kazounde. Patience! courage! Be ready at any moment. God may yet have pity on us!"
"And Nan?" quickly asked old Tom.
"Nan is dead!"
"The first!"
"And the last!" replied Dick Sand, "for we know well----"
At this moment a hand was laid on his shoulder, and he heard these words, spoken in the amiable voice which he knew only too well:
"Ah, my young friend, if I am not mistaken! Enchanted to see you again!"
Dick Sand turned.
Harris was before him.
"Where is Mrs. Weldon?" cried Dick Sand, walking toward the American.
"Alas!" replied Harris, pretending a pity that he did not feel, "the poor mother! How could she survive!"
"Dead!" cried Dick Sand. "And her child?"
"The poor baby!" replied Harris, in the same tone, "how could he outlive such fatigue!"
So, all whom Dick Sand loved were dead!
What passed within him? An irresistible movement of anger, a desire for vengeance, which he must satisfy at any price!
Dick Sand jumped upon Harris, seized a dagger from the American's belt, and plunged it into his heart.
"Curse you!" cried Harris, falling.
Harris was dead.
CHAPTER X.
THE GREAT MARKET DAY.
Dick Sand's action had been so rapid that no one could stop him. A few natives threw themselves upon him, and he would have been murdered had not Negoro appeared.
At a sign from the Portuguese, the natives drew back, raised Harris's corpse and carried it away. Alvez and Coimbra demanded Dick Sand's immediate death, but Negoro said to them in a low voice that they would lose nothing by waiting. The order was given to take away the young novice, with a caution not to lose sight of him for a moment.
Dick Sand had seen Negoro for the first time since their departure from the coast. He knew that this wretch was alone responsible for the loss of the "Pilgrim." He ought to hate him still more than his accomplices. And yet, after having struck the American, he scorned to address a word to Negoro. Harris had said that Mrs. Weldon and her child had succumbed. Nothing interested him now, not even what they would do with him. They would send him away. Where? It did not matter.
Dick Sand, heavily chained, was left on the floor of a pen without a window, a kind of dungeon where the trader, Alvez, shut up the slaves condemned to death for rebellion or unlawful acts. There he could no longer have any communication with the exterior; he no longer dreamed of regretting it. He had avenged those whom he loved, who no longer lived. Whatever fate awaited him, he was ready for it.
It will be understood that if Negoro had stopped the natives who were about to punish Harris's murderer, it was only because he wished to reserve Dick Sand for one of those terrible torments of which the natives hold the secret. The ship's cook held in his power the captain of fifteen years. He only wanted Hercules to make his vengeance complete.
Two days afterward, May 28th, the sale began, the great "lakoni," during which the traders of the principal factories of the interior would meet the natives of the neighboring provinces. This market was not specially for the sale of slaves, but all the products of this fertile Africa would be gathered there with the producers.
From early morning all was intense animation on the vast "tchitoka" of Kazounde, and it is difficult to give a proper idea of the scene. It was a concourse of four or five thousand persons, including Alvez's slaves, among whom were Tom and his companions. These four men, for the reason that they belonged to a different race, are all the more valuable to the brokers in human flesh. Alvez was there, the first among all. Attended by Coimbra, he offered the slaves in lots. These the traders from the interior would form into caravans. Among these traders were certain half-breeds from Oujiji, the principal market of Lake Tanganyika, and some Arabs, who are far superior to the half-breeds in this kind of trade.