I asked Amoo if he, in gratitude to me for saving his child, would aid me to escape; but he shook his head, adding:
"I am the brother of a great king, and must keep my slave."
"Why?"
"To punish the white men, who fatten up our brothers beyond the Sea of Darkness, and eat them."
After reiterated applications to his gratitude and pity for freedom or assistance, finding that he was gradually losing his temper and becoming suspicious; that his snake-like eyes were beginning to gleam and his thick red nostrils to quiver, I abandoned the subject, and resuming my hoe, went to my daily task in the patch of garden where our yams and other esculents grew, and affected to work as usual, conscious that, for a time, my savage owner was eyeing me with vague doubts, and while playing ominously with his long reed-like asseguy, was probably repenting that by his admissions he had put me on my guard against the artistic views of his better half.
After a time he disappeared, yet I dreaded that it was only to conceal himself under some of the bushes, or the leaves of the creeping gourds, to watch me, so I affected to hoe industriously—yes, and to whistle too, though my heart was sick and full of dreadful apprehensions. One thing I had resolved, come what might, never again to commit my head to sleep, or to pass a night within the same wigwam with that horrible woman.
While revolving in my mind, and almost blind with desperation, what measures I should take to save myself, to escape from my present danger and misery, I saw her pass from the wood towards the town of wigwams. In one hand she held the knife I had sharpened so nicely for her, in the other a basket filled with herbs—herbs, I doubted not, for my especial behoof; and she "grinned horribly a ghastly smile," as she walked on with that shuffling gait peculiar to these negresses.
My heart swelled with so much rage and hatred at this hideous creature, that I had some difficulty in repressing a vehement desire to beat her down with my hoe; but such a proceeding would only have ensured and accelerated my own destruction; as I knew not what number of watchful savages might at that moment be eyeing me from amid the jungle of leaves, flowers, and fruit which bordered the patch wherein I worked, under a sun so vertical that I had scarcely a shadow.
Lest such a surveillance might be maintained, I resolved as soon as she disappeared to adopt something of their own subtlety.
I seated myself under a tree among some weeds, as if tired, and then, after a time, affected to sleep; though keeping watch with open ears and half-closed eyes, lest any one might approach; but all remained still around me, save the monotonous hum of the millions of insects that revolved in the shade of the adjacent wood.