"You have rich friends, no doubt; they will pay."
"Ransom! Much I'm worth! What are you taking me right away from my friends for, then?"
The Arab shrugged.
"You can judge," he said.
And indeed, when Tom thought of it, he saw that the chief was wise in seeking his remote and inaccessible stronghold before opening communications with the British authorities.
It took two days to reach the village appointed by the chief as the rendezvous for his scattered force. Tom was carried all the way in the litter, the hakim refusing to allow him yet to try to walk. They talked together in German, but though the Arab spoke freely enough about things in general, giving the captive many bits of curious and interesting information, he was very reserved on all matters relating to the chief's aims and plans and movements.
On reaching the village the chief announced his intention of remaining there for three days, to give his friends and allies ample time for rejoining him. From the hut in which the hakim had fixed his quarters Tom had a clear view through the village. He saw a scene which haunted his memory and imagination for many a long day. Within a fence of banana stalks stood a series of low sheds, many lines deep. Between them, and around, were packed rows upon rows of naked negroes, standing, lying stretched upon the ground, or moving about in utter listlessness. Young men, women, children, all, save the very youngest, were chained and fettered; their necks were encircled with iron rings, through which a chain passed, binding the wretched creatures together in gangs of twenty. Tom saw one man raise his hand to his neck to ease it of the galling band; another, worn to a skeleton, lay panting his life out by a heap of filth; two tiny black boys were innocently playing with the links of the chain that bound their mother to other women. The look of agony and despair upon the faces of the grown slaves, still more the happy unconsciousness of the little children, touched Tom to the heart, and there and then he vowed, if in God's providence he ever escaped from that place of horror, to do all in his power to help stamp out the cruel trade. He poured out his indignation in fierce words to the Arab, who smiled and shrugged, remarking simply, "Allah is good." Tom tried to reason with him, but found him absolutely incapable even of understanding what the pother was about. "There always had been slaves, there always would be slaves; Allah is good."
Tom turned away, impatient and sick at heart. His eye fell on an adjacent enclosure, in which the relics of innumerable raids lay scattered or heaped up in profusion. Drums, spears, swords, assegais, bows and arrows, knives, ivory horns, ivory pestles, wooden idols, the wardrobes and paraphernalia of sorcerers, baskets, pots, hammers--thousands of things, useful and useless, bore witness to the Arabs' depredations. As he looked, a picture seemed to form itself in his mind. Through the darkness of night he sees stealthy, long-robed forms creep towards a sleeping village; no sound issuing from the gloom save the drowsy hum of cicadas or the croak of distant frogs; when suddenly the glare of torches gleams upon the huts, the thatch bursts into flame, and the scared sleepers wake amid the rattle of musketry, some to meet swift death with momentary pain, others--alas! the youngest, the strongest--to wear out their lives in the lingering death of slavery. Tom brushed his hands over his eyes, and begged the impassive Arab to take him away.
On the third morning of his stay in the village Tom observed that the chief was in a towering rage. He asked the physician, as the caravan again moved out westward, what was the cause of his master's disturbance. Mahmoud refused to explain. The truth was that one of the scouts despatched by the chief to the scene of his fight with Major Burnaby had returned with the news that he had discovered, on the bluff, the corpses of eight of the nine men placed there to hurl down the logs. Up to that moment the chief had been entirely at a loss to account for the failure of the ambush so carefully arranged, and had only nursed vague suspicions. But the fact that the ambush had failed, as now reported, in the very first detail, coupled with the nonappearance of De Castro, whom he had expected to join him immediately after the battle, convinced the chief that he had been betrayed, and by his supposed friend, the Portuguese. Chewing the bitter cud of his wrath, Mustapha ordered his men to set off early in the morning, including in the caravan six hundred of the slaves.
Tom was no longer borne in a litter. The hakim had declared him well enough to walk. He was provided with a linen turban to protect his head, and with a gourd and wallet to hold water and food for the day. That he was a prisoner was left in no doubt by the guard of six men, armed with loaded rifles, who marched with him, three in front and three behind. The six were changed every three hours, a precaution against any attempt on Tom's part to become too friendly with his guards, unnecessary in the circumstances, for when, from sheer tedium, he ventured to address a few words to them, they shook their heads in unfeigned ignorance of his meaning.