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 Kérika; 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. Mâdou, 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 Mâdou 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 the bedclothes over his head. It is certainly not very agreeable to hear such stories told by the actors in them; and Jack was very glad that he was in the Moronval Academy rather than in that terrible land of Dahomey. Mâdou seeing the effect he had produced, dwelt no longer on the ceremonies preceding his departure, but proceeded to describe his arrival and life at Marseilles.