.

The Coanza had overflowed during the night, with the waters of its
tributaries swelled by the storm.

This Coanza, one of the rivers of Angola, flows into the Atlantic, a
hundred miles from the cape where the "Pilgrim" was wrecked. It was
this river that Lieutenant Cameron had to cross some years later,
before reaching Benguela. The Coanza is intended to become the vehicle
for the interior transit of this portion of the Portuguese colony.
Already steamers ascend its lower course, and before ten years elapse,
they will ply over its upper bed. Dick Sand had then acted wisely in
seeking some navigable river toward the north. The rivulet he had
followed had just been emptied into the Coanza. Only for this sudden
attack, of which he had had no intimation to put him on his guard, he
would have found the Coanza a mile farther on. His companions and he
would have embarked on a raft, easily constructed, and they would have
had a good chance to descend the stream to the Portuguese villages,
where the steamers come into port. There, their safety would be
secured.

It would not be so.

The camp, perceived by Dick Sand, was established on an elevation near
the ant-hill, into which fate had thrown him, as in a trap. At the
summit of that elevation rose an enormous sycamore fig-tree, which
would easily shelter five hundred men under its immense branches.
Those who have not seen those giant trees of Central Africa, can form
no idea of them. Their branches form a forest, and one could be lost
in it. Farther on, great banyans, of the kind whose seeds do not
change into fruits, completed the outline of this vast landscape.

It was under the sycamore's shelter, hidden, as in a mysterious
asylum, that a whole caravan--the one whose arrival Harris had
announced to Negoro--had just halted. This numerous procession of
natives, snatched from their villages by the trader Alvez's agents,
were going to the Kazounde market. Thence the slaves, as needed, would
be sent either to the barracks of the west coast, or to N'yangwe,
toward the great lake region, to be distributed either in upper Egypt,
or in the factories of Zanzibar.

As soon as they arrived at the camp, Dick Sand and his companions had
been treated as slaves. Old Tom, his son Austin, Acteon, poor Nan,
negroes by birth, though they did not belong to the African race, were
treated like captive natives. After they were disarmed, in spite of
the strongest resistance, they were held