“He is my brother.”
“Your brother! A white Arab boy your brother. Dog of a pagan!”
“The blood ceremony was entered into between us. I am the King of the Watuta.”
“You a king of the Watuta! Ha! ha! ha! We have plenty of kings with us. Do you see that woman before you? She is a queen in Uwemba. Kings sell well. If you were king of all the devils, and brother to all the Arab Selims, you are my slave now, and the likeliest, best looking I ever had. I will not part with you under one hundred dollars. Wallahi! There, go. Men, take them away. Strike camp. He for the sofari” (journey.)
“But listen, chief, I am not your slave. Let me go. Simba and Selim will be angry with you if you keep me. Let me go, chief. Oh! let me go to the camp; it is right close here.”
“Silence! No words, not one word. You are my slave. Arabs know how to keep slaves. For the bad slaves there is a yoke-tree, besides chains. Be wise, and keep silence. You shall go to Zanzibar with that chain around your neck; if you are bad, you shall go with the yoke-tree around your neck. For those slaves who talk too much we have sticks. Be wise, I tell you. Drive the gang on, men.”
Kalulu was desperate; the blood rushed to his head; he got furious. His senses and feelings were one wild riot. He could not describe how or why he leaped with frantic energy at the villain. He was possessed with fury. He therefore struck at him, caught hold of him, tried to beat his brains out with his chain, and would have done it, no doubt, or so bruised his features that they would have become undistinguishable; but he now had to deal with clever men, who knew what the spasmodic, despairing energy of slaves newly captured was. Before he had given the man more than three blows he was dragged off, kicked, pounded, cuffed, bruised, and almost strangled. Then a systematic flogging took place; such a flogging that a villainous half-caste, enraged, would be likely to give, while he fought with all his might, and gave half-a-dozen of them work enough to hold him. When the punishment was over, he was not left to meditate upon his position, but was marched off in the direction of Unyanyembe, the last of the slave-gang!
The Arabs were about making what they call a “tiri-kesa”—that is, an evening journey—in order to reach water before noon next day, by which time they would probably have made a march of thirty miles. They had camped deep in the woods, about half a mile from the road. Had it not been for the smoke of their fires, Kalulu would never have seen them, probably. When once their fires went out it would be difficult for anybody to know that a slave-gang had been there, or that such a cruel deed as the kidnapping of Kalulu had ever taken place. If the Arabs but continued their journey until noon, and started again at night, and left no trace behind, how would it be possible for those who would seek Kalulu to find a trace of him?
What a change of feeling came over the outraged youth! What a sudden and complete transformation was this! He left a camp of Arabs to enter another. In one, he was beloved, esteemed, idolised; in the other, he was a slave, beaten like a dog, chained! In one camp the Arabs were good, kind, brotherly; in the other, they were robbers, kidnappers, enslavers, villains. In one camp he esteemed, he admired, he loved; in another, he brooded over his injuries, and he hated with all the hate with which one wronged is able to hate.
If he was treated so harshly at the beginning of his slavery; if he was the victim of such damnable atrocity as that which he had suffered, by what rule or system could be measured that which he would have to suffer before he reached Zanzibar; and at Zanzibar, with that iron collar perpetually about his neck, how could he ever advantage himself? Would there ever be an end to the indescribable misery he suffered now? Had he parted for ever from freedom and friendship? Would there ever be hope for him more?