CHAPTER XLVIII.
RETAKEN.
Released from the tree, but still benumbed and sore after being so long bound to it, I was now stretched upon the grass, under the shadow of its great fan-like branches. Many persons were moving about me, and the hum of their voices filled my ear.
Raising myself slowly and heavily upon my hands, I saw around me hundreds of negroes, and close to mine was the ugly visage of—Amoo.
"Oh," thought I, bitterly; "this is too much! A prisoner again, and after all the dangers I have dared—the friends I have seen perish—the miseries I have undergone! Will fate never weary of persecuting me?"
But Amoo was not such a wicked fellow after all.
Producing his gourd bottle of palm wine, he mixed it with cool water from a shaded spring, and forced me to imbibe a long draught, after which I sat up and looked about me more collectedly.
I was in the midst of a species of negro bivouac, consisting of many hundreds of men and women, with camels and dromedaries laden with various stuffs and rudely fashioned weapons and utensils, made up in bales with grass matting and cordage.
They were cooking at several fires, and in various modes, the flesh of an elephant which they had snared, as Amoo informed me, in a pit on the other side of the forest on the preceding day, and the meat of which is esteemed in these latitudes as a veritable dainty—a right royal luxury. He pressed me to eat a slice or so, but in my weak state, and the fever of my spirit, the odour and the aspect of it were more than enough for me, so a mouthful or two of boiled yam and palm wine sufficed.
The negroes were all well armed with asseguys, swords, bows, muskets, and targets, as if proceeding on a hostile expedition. Among them were many who were better clad and more civilized in aspect than the painted savages who dwell by the Snake River, and these, Amoo informed me, were subjects of the King of Benin.