Mrs. Weldon felt she had gained an important point in thus sparing her husband the necessity of a journey to Kazonndé, and had no apprehensions about herself on her way to Mossamedes, knowing that it was to the interest of Alvez and Negoro alike to attend carefully to her wants.
Upon the terms of the covenant being thus arranged, Mrs. Weldon wrote such a letter to her husband as she knew would bring him with all speed to Mossamedes, but she left it entirely to Negoro to represent himself in whatever light he chose. Once in possession of the document, Negoro lost no time in starting on his errand. The very next morning, taking with him about twenty negroes, he set off towards the north, alleging to Alvez as his motive for taking that direction, that he was not only going to embark somewhere at the mouth of the Congo, but that he was anxious to keep as far as possible from the prison-houses of the Portuguese, with which already he had been involuntarily only too familiar.
After his departure, Mrs. Weldon resolved to make the best of her period of imprisonment, aware that it could hardly be less than four months before he would return. She had no desire to go beyond the precincts assigned her, even had the privilege been allowed her; but warned by Negoro that Hercules was still free, and might at any time attempt a rescue, Alvez had no thought of permitting her any unnecessary liberty. Her life therefore soon resumed its previous monotony.
The daily routine went on within the enclosure pretty much as in other parts of the town, the women all being employed in various labours for the benefit of their husbands and masters. The rice was pounded with wooden pestles; the maize was peeled and winnowed, previously to extracting the granulous substance for the drink which they call mtyellé; the sorghum had to be gathered in, the season of its ripening being marked by festive observances; there was a fragrant oil to be expressed from a kind of olive named the mpafoo; the cotton had to be spun on spindles, which were hardly less than a foot and a half in length; there was the bark of trees to be woven into textures for wearing; the manioc had to be dug up, and the cassava procured from its roots; and besides all this, there was the preparation of the soil for its future plantings, the usual productions of the country being the moritsané beans, growing in pods fifteen inches long upon stems twenty feet high, the arachides, from which they procure a serviceable oil, the chilobé pea, the blossoms of which are used to give a flavour to the insipid sorghum, cucumbers, of which the seeds are roasted as chestnuts, as well as the common crops of coffee, sugar, onions, guavas, and sesame.
To the women’s lot, too, falls the manipulation of all the fermented drinks, the malafoo, made from bananas, the pombé, and various other liquors. Nor should the care of all the domestic animals be forgotten; the cows that will not allow themselves to be milked unless they can see their calf, or a stuffed representative of it; the short-horned heifers that not unfrequently have a hump; the goats that, like slaves, form part of the currency of the country; the pigs, the sheep, and the poultry.
The men, meanwhile, smoke their hemp or tobacco, hunt buffaloes or elephants, or are hired by the dealers to join in the slave-raids; the harvest of slaves, in fact, being a thing of as regular and periodic recurrence as the ingathering of the maize.
In her daily strolls, Mrs. Weldon would occasionally pause to watch the women, but they only responded to her notice by a long stare or by a hideous grimace; a kind of natural instinct made them hate a white skin, and they had no spark of commiseration for the stranger who had been brought among them; Halima, however, was a marked exception, she grew more and more devoted to her mistress, and by degrees, the two became able to exchange many sentences in the native dialect.
Jack generally accompanied his mother. Naturally enough he longed to get outside the enclosure, but still he found considerable amusement in watching the birds that built in a huge baobab that grew within; there were maraboos making their nests with twigs; there were scarlet-throated souimangas with nests like weaverbirds; widow birds that helped themselves liberally to the thatch of the huts; calaos with their tuneful song; grey parrots, with bright red tails, called roufs by the Manyuema, who apply the same name to their reigning chiefs; and insect-eating drongos, like grey linnets with large red beaks. Hundreds of butterflies flitted about, especially in the neighbourhood of the brooks; but these were more to the taste of Cousin Benedict than of little Jack; over and over again the child expressed his regret that he could not see over the walls, and more than ever he seemed to miss his friend Dick, who had taught him to climb a mast, and who he was sure would have fine fun with him in the branches of the trees, which were growing sometimes to the height of a hundred feet.
So long as the supply of insects did not fail, Benedict would have been contented to stay on without a murmur in his present quarters. True, without his glasses he worked at a disadvantage; but he had had the good fortune to discover a minute bee that forms its cells in the holes of worm-eaten wood, and a “sphex” that practises the craft of the
