Escape for the poor fellows so banished seemed impossible, for, although they had had an idea, from the appearance of the sun and stars, that they had been all the time journeying steadily west, with either a little angle of south or of north in it, so cruelly long had the route been, so terrible had been their hardships, and so great their dangers, that the idea of returning was considered by them as entirely out of the question. Hope did not quite forsake them, however, but they had no means of communicating with the outer world—that is, the world beyond this dark continent. Occasionally they cut letters in the hides of the wild beasts that had been slain, as these skins often found their way to the markets of Zanzibar and Lamoo.
Who knows, they told each other, but some one may see these letters, and come to our assistance!
But alas! though the letters were seen, and marvelled at and talked about, no government, either English or French, deemed it worth while to send a search and relief expedition.
Yet those ten poor fellows had wives and little ones, had sisters and brothers, and fathers and mothers at home, who were, like Harry’s parents, mourning for them as dead.
The lives of cruelty and indignity which they had led, during all these long dark dreary months and years, it is not my intention to describe. Suffice it to say that these men were the abject slaves of a brutal king, compelled to eat of the most loathsome garbage and to live in a state of almost nudity. No wonder that already four of their number had passed away. Their bodies, shocking to relate, were not even buried, but thrown into the jungle for the wild dogs to gnaw and the ants to eat.
The others lived, including Nicholls the bo’s’n.
Ah! often and often had they wished to die.
The only pleasure of their lives, if pleasure it could be called, was that at night they were not separated, but kept in one common prison, strictly guarded by armed sentinels.
Then in the dark they used to talk of the dear old days at sea, and of their homes far away in peaceful England.
More than once during the time of their captivity King Kara-Kara had been on the war-path against the drunken old ’Ngaloo, and the former had been the victor, although he had not followed up his triumph, as he used to threaten he would do, and annihilate ’Ngaloo and his people.