Weldon looked in Dick Sand's face while he thus talked. The young novice's burning eyes spoke of the courage by which he felt animated. In seeing him thus, in observing these brave, devoted blacks, wife and mother, she could not yet despair; and, besides, why was she abandoned? Did she not think herself on hospitable ground? Harris's treason could not, in her eyes, have any very serious consequences. Dick Sand read her thought, and he kept his eyes on the ground.
* * * * *
CHAPTER IV.
THE BAD ROADS OF ANGOLA.
At this moment little Jack awoke, and put his arms around his mother's neck. His eyes looked better. The fever had not returned.
"You are better, my darling," said Mrs. Weldon, pressing the sick child to her heart.
"Yes, mama," replied Jack, "but I am a little thirsty."
They could only give the child some fresh water, of which he drank with pleasure.
"And my friend Dick?" he said.
"Here I am, Jack," replied Dick Sand, coming to take the young child's hand.
"And my friend Hercules?"
"Hercules is here, Mr. Jack," replied the giant, bringing nearer his good face.
"And the horse?" demanded little Jack.
"The horse? Gone, Mr. Jack," replied Hercules. "I will carry you. Will you find that I trot too hard?"
"No," replied little Jack; "but then I shall no longer have any bridle to hold."
"Oh! you will put a bit in _my_ mouth, if you wish," said Hercules, opening his large mouth, "and you may pull back so long as that will give you pleasure."
"You know very well that I shall not pull back."
"Good! You would be wrong! I have a hard mouth."
"But Mr. Harris's farm?" the little boy asked again.
"We shall soon arrive there, my Jack," replied Mrs. Weldon. "Yes, soon!"
"Will we set out again?" then said Dick Sand, in order to cut short this conversation.
"Yes, Dick, let us go," replied Mrs. Weldon.
The camp was broken up, and the march continued again in the same order. It was necessary to pass through the underwood, so as not to leave the course of the rivulet. There had been some paths there, formerly, but those paths were dead, according to the native expression--that is, brambles and brushwood had usurped them. In these painful conditions they might spend three hours in making one mile. The blacks worked without relaxation. Hercules, after putting little Jack back in Nan's arms, took his part of the work; and what a part! He gave stout "heaves," making his ax turn round, and a hole was made before them, as if he had been a devouring fire.
Fortunately, this fatiguing work would not last. This first mile cleared, they saw a large hole, opened through the underwood, which ended obliquely at the rivulet and followed its bank. It was a passage made by elephants, and those animals, doubtless by hundreds, were in the habit of traversing this part of the forest. Great holes, made by the feet of the enormous pachyderms, riddled a soil softened during the rainy season. Its spongy nature also prepared it for those large imprints.
It soon appeared that this passage did not serve for those gigantic animals alone. Human beings had more than once taken this route, but as flocks, brutally led to the slaughter-house, would have followed it. Here and there bones of dead bodies strewed the ground; remains of skeletons, half gnawed by animals, some of which still bore the slave's fetters.
There are, in Central Africa, long roads thus marked out by human debris. Hundreds of miles are traversed by caravans, and how many unhappy wretches fall by the way, under the agents' whips, killed by fatigue or privations, decimated by sickness! How many more massacred by the traders themselves, when food fails! Yes, when they can no longer feed them, they kill them with the gun, with the sword, with the knife! These massacres are not rare.
So, then, caravans of slaves had followed this road. For a mile Dick Sand and his companions struck against these scattered bones at each step, putting to flight enormous fern-owls.