For many days I lived on these, with such fruit as I could find when at work near our wigwam, and Amoo gave me at times a little olive oil and palm wine, but in secret, for this warrior, though fearless in other respects, was civilized enough to be afraid of his wife.
My days were spent in hoeing yams, cutting fuel, carrying water in calibashes, selecting long and straight reeds for baskets, or boughs and bark to keep the wigwam water-tight. My mistress would have had me dive into the bay in search of sea-eggs, but to this I would by no means consent, and my refusal caused an open and standing feud between us.
At night, in a corner of their wretched dwelling, I coiled myself up on a panther skin, and for hours would lie awake in the dark, revolving plans of escape. To push a passage through the wattles, and make off under cloud of night, would have been an easy task, could I have silenced or circumvented the herd of ferocious dogs which guarded the town, or rather village, after sunset, and the yells of which, on the slightest movement, raised an alarm that would soon cause their being unleashed and let slip upon my track.
The negroes among whom I was cast worshipped the sun, the moon, and the devil; and in many instances, with singular barbarity, offered up their youngest children to the latter, that rain might fall in due season to make the yams big and the bananas grow.
Amoo strove in vain to lessen the severity of his wife, who frequently beat me with a hard club, till I grew weary of existence, and my heart swelled with savage thoughts of revenge.
Among the glass beads, feathers, rusty nails, and other trash which Amoo wore as a necklace, was his great amulet, a curious coin, which he one day permitted me to examine, but which he would have yielded up less readily than his life.
It proved to be a piece of the reign of Servius Tullius, sixth King of the Romans, and consequently must have been more than twenty-three centuries old. How came it there, and what was its history? So this prize, which half the savans of Europe would have rejoiced to possess, hung, and, for aught that I know, still hangs at the neck of an African savage, who found it on the sea-shore.
It was several ounces in weight, and bore on one side the head of Minerva, on the other an ox, as plain as if struck yesterday; and accoutred with this "great medicine," Amoo rushed fearlessly to encounter alike human enemies and the wild beasts of the forests which bordered the Gabon and the River of Snakes.
In the course of three weeks I picked up several words of the native language, which is full of rather musical sounds, as most of the words end in a vowel. The desire for escape added to the care with which I studied it.
One day when Amoo, with other savages, was hunting in the forest, and his better half was paddling about in her canoe on the river fishing, she suddenly uttered a shrill yell, which arrested me at my work among the yams, where I was hoeing under a broiling sun.