inued his story.

At night the forests were very different; hunting-parties bivouacked
in the jungles, building huge fires to drive away wild beasts, who were
heard in the distance roaring horribly. The birds were aroused; and the
bats, silent and black as shadows, attracted by the fire-light, hovered
over and about it until daybreak, when they assembled on some gigantic
tree, motionless, and pressed against each other, looking like some
singular leaves, dry and dead.

In this open-air life the little prince grew strong and manly,--could
wield a sabre and carry a gun at an age when children are usually tied
to their mother's apron-string. The king was proud of his son, the heir
to his throne. But, alas! it seemed that it was not enough, even for a
negro prince, to know how to shoot an elephant through the eye; he must
also learn to read books and writing, for, said the wise king to his
son, "White man always has paper in his pocket to cheat black man with."
Of course some European might have been found in Dahomey who could
instruct the prince,--for French and English flags floated over the
ships in the harbors. But the king had himself been sent by his father
to a town called Marseilles, very far at the end of the world; and he
wished his son to receive a similar education.

How unhappy the little prince was in leaving Kerika; he looked at his
sabre, hung his gun against the wall, and set sail with M. Bonfils, a
clerk in a mercantile house, who sent him home every year with the gold
dust stolen from the poor negroes.

Madou, however, was resigned; he wished to be a great king some day, to
command the troop of Amazons, to be the proprietor of these fields of
corn and wheat, and of the palace filled with jars of palm-oil and with
treasures of gold and ivory. To own these riches he must deserve them,
and be capable of defending them when necessary,--and Madou early
learned that it is hard to be a king; for when one has more pleasures
than the rest of the world, one has also greater responsibilities.

His departure was the occasion of great public fetes, of sacrifices to
the fetish and to the divinities of the sea. All the temples were thrown
open for these solemnities, the prayers of the nation were offered
there, and at the last moment, when the ship set sail, fifteen prisoners
of war were executed on the shore, and the executioner threw their heads
into a great copper basin.

"Good gracious!" gasped Jack, pulling t