Including women and children their party numbered some sixty souls.

At evening they passed the island where they had left the company of slavers, but could see no sign of life upon it, and never learned whether the men perished or escaped.
An hour later they encamped upon the bank of the river, and it was while they were sitting round the fire at night that Juanna told Leonard of the horrors which she had undergone during her dreadful sojourn with the slave caravan.

She told him also how she had torn leaves from the Bible which she chanced to have with her, and fixed them upon the reeds whenever she could find an opportunity of so doing, in the hope that they might guide her father, should he return and attempt her rescue.
"It is all like a nightmare," she said; "and as for that hideous farce of marriage with which it ended, I can scarcely bear to think of it." Then Francisco, who had been sitting silent, spoke for the first time.
"You speak, senora," he said in his subdued voice, "of that 'hideous farce of marriage,' and I suppose you mean the ceremony which I performed between you and the Senor Outram, being forced to the act by Pereira.

It is my duty to tell you both that, however irregular this marriage may have been, I do not believe it to be a farce.

I believe that you are lawfully man and wife until death shall part you, unless indeed the Pope should annul the union, as he alone can do." "Nonsense, nonsense," broke in Leonard; "you forget that there was no consent; that we are of another religion, and that the form was necessary to our plot." "The Church knows nothing of the reasons which lead to the undertaking of wedlock," Francisco answered mildly.