Poor boy! Innocent youth! He judged all Arabs to be good, like Selim and Abdullah, and he stepped out of his hiding-place and walked deliberately to the camp. He was soon seen, addressed, and invited to come up to them.
“Hi, Ndgu! njo.” (“Hello, my brother! come here.”)
This was a fair beginning, to call him “my brother,” the English reader will think. Not at all; it is an ordinary hail to a stranger, in the same way that “Rafiki,” my friend, is. But Kalulu advanced, and many men—probably thirty—hurried to meet him. Three men, apparently chiefs of the party—but they were not white, like Selim or Abdullah—were talking together as he came up to them.
The oldest of them—marked with the small-pox, a man with very small eyes—who had a light bamboo cane in his hand, turned towards him, and asked him who he was, where he came from, what he was doing in the forest all alone, to which Kalulu answered as well as he was able in broken Kisawhili—the coast language—smiling all the time, and wishing he would testify some pleasure at seeing him. The man turned round to his companions, and talked with them rapidly a language he did not understand, but it was horribly guttural. It was Arabic; and as the harsh words were heard Kalulu almost shuddered. The man with the stick pointed to Kalulu often, the others nodded, apparently agreeing with what the pock-marked, small-eyed chief said.
The chief Arab—he was not an Arab, but a half-caste, half-negro, half-Arab—sat down and pointed to Kalulu to seat himself by him. This, thought Kalulu, was friendly; and in pure guilelessness he asked him:
“Are ye Arabs?”
“Certainly. Mashallah! What did you take us for?” replied the chief.
“I don’t know. I thought ye were Arabs, but I was not sure.”
Then Kalulu looked round, more at home. In one corner of the camp he saw a large gang of slaves, chained and padlocked safe. No chance of running for any of those, he thought. Simba could not break that chain, nor any of the strong iron padlocks which confined each collar.
He was about to ask another question, when, without warning, without the least suspicion having been raised in his mind, he was pounced upon by half-a-dozen men from behind and disarmed. The slave-gang was brought up close to him, an iron collar was handed to the chief, who encircled the young neck of Kalulu with it, slipped an iron loop over the folding crescents, introduced a strong padlock into a staple after it, locked it, and then stood up to survey his captive. He nodded to the men who had hold of him. They released him, and the boy stood up, and the captor and captive looked at each other.