From Cousin Benedict, it is needless to repeat, she could expect no assistance; his own personal pursuits engrossed him, and he had no care nor leisure to bestow upon external circumstances. His first feeling, on being made to understand that he was not in America, was one of deep disappointment that the wonderful things he had seen were no discoveries at all; they were simply African insects common on African soil. This vexation, however, soon passed away, and he began to believe that “the land of the Pharaohs” might possess as much entomological wealth as “the land of the Incas.”
“Ah,” he would exclaim to Mrs. Weldon, heedless that she gave him little or no attention, “this is the country of the manticorae, and wonderful coleoptera they are, with their long hairy legs, their sharp elytra and their big mandibles; the most remarkable of them all is the tuberous manticora. And isn’t this, too, the land of the golden-tipped Calosoma? and of the prickly-legged goliaths of Guinea and Gabon? Here, too, we ought to find the spotted Anthidia, which lay their eggs in empty snail-shells; and the sacred Ateuchus, which the old Egyptians used to venerate as divine.”
“Yes, yes;” he would say at another time, “this is the proper habitat of those death’s-head sphinxes which are now so common everywhere; and this is the place for those ‘Idia Bigoti,’ so formidable to the natives of Senegal. There must be wonderful discoveries to be made here if only those good people will let me.”
The “good people” referred to were Negoro and Harris, who had restored him much of the liberty of which Dick Sands had found it necessary to deprive him. With freedom to roam and in possession of his tin box, Benedict would have been amongst the most contented of men, had it not been for the loss of his spectacles and magnifying-glass, now buried with the King of Kazonndé. Reduced to the necessity of poking every insect almost into his eyes before he could discover its characteristics, he would have sacrificed much to recover or replace his glasses, but as such articles were not to be procured at any price, he contented himself with the permission to go where he pleased within the limits of the palisade. His keepers knew him well enough to be satisfied that he would make no attempt to escape, and as the enclosure was nearly a mile in circumference, containing many shrubs and trees and huts with thatched roofs, besides being intersected by a running stream, it afforded him a very fair scope for his researches, and who should say that he would not discover some novel specimen to which, in the records of entomological science, his own name might be assigned?
If thus the domain of Antonio Alvez was sufficient to satisfy Benedict, to little Jack it might well seem immense. But though allowed to ramble over the whole place as he liked, the child rarely cared to leave his mother; he would be continually inquiring about his father, whom he had now so long been expecting to see: he would ask why Nan and Hercules and Dingo had gone away and left him; and perpetually he would be expressing his wonder where Dick could be, and wishing he would come back again. Mrs. Weldon could only hide her tears and answer him by caresses.
Nothing, however, transpired to give the least intimation that any of the prisoners were to be treated otherwise than they had been upon the journey from the Cuanza. Excepting such as were retained for old Alvez’ personal service, all the slaves had been sold, and the storehouses were now full of stuffs and ivory, the stuffs destined to be sent into the central provinces and the ivory to be exported. The establishment was thus no longer crowded as it had been, and Mrs. Weldon and Jack were lodged in a different hut to Cousin Benedict. All three, however, took their meals together and were allowed a sufficient diet of mutton or goat’s-flesh, vegetables, manioc, sorghum and native fruits. With the traders’ servants they held no communication, but Halima, a young slave who had been told off to attend to Mrs. Weldon, evinced for her new mistress an attachment which, though rough, was evidently sincere.
Old Alvez, who occupied the principal house in the depot, was rarely seen; whilst the nonappearance of either Harris or Negoro caused Mrs. Weldon much surprise and perplexity. In the midst of all her troubles, too, she was haunted by the thought of the anxiety her husband must be suffering on her account. Unaware of her having embarked on board the Pilgrim, at first he would have wondered at steamer after steamer arriving at San Francisco without her. After a while the Pilgrim would have been registered amongst the number of missing ships; and it was certain the intelligence would be forwarded to him by his correspondents, that the vessel had sailed from Auckland with his wife and child on board. What was he to imagine? he might refuse to believe that they had perished at sea, but he would never dream of their having been carried to Africa, and would certainly institute a search in no other direction than on the
