Half an hour later the ship under full canvas was speeding merrily down the bay with her jubilant crew bawling out the chorus of a homeward-bound chantey.
CHAPTER XIX SOLD AS A SLAVE
The distress and terror of our poor lads when they found themselves flung into the horrible darkness of the ship's hold with its hatch closed above them would have been pitiful had there been any witnesses. But there was none, and for many weary hours they seemed to have been imprisoned in mere wantonness only to be forgotten as soon as the treacherous act had been accomplished. Their sole comfort was that they were together; for, on being dropped into the hold, Nahma found Tasquanto, stunned by the magnitude of his misfortune, awaiting him.
For a time the two remained speechless, only holding to each other, listening, and fearfully awaiting what next might happen. Although they could see nothing there was much to hear, for the anchor was being hove up, sails loosed and sheeted home, canvas was slatting, yards were creaking, and all to the accompaniment of much hoarse shouting and a continual tramping of heavy feet. But none of these sounds conveyed to our captives the slightest idea of what was taking place. After a while the ship began to heel until they believed her to be capsizing, and that their last hour had come. Also they heard a sound of rushing waters. A little later both were so utterly prostrated by sea-sickness that whatever might happen no longer concerned them.
In this wretched plight they lay for what seemed like many days, but in reality only until the middle of the next forenoon, when, of a sudden, the hatch above them was removed and they were blinded by the flood of light that followed. Then men came to them and they were driven on deck, where, dazed and weak with illness, they staggered from side to side with the motion of the ship. Their pitiable appearance was greeted by shouts of coarse mirth from the crew, who found in it a vastly entertaining spectacle.
The captives were offered food, but refused it with loathing, though they drank eagerly from a bucket of water placed beside them as they sat on deck at the foremast's foot. After a while Nahma became sufficiently revived by the fresh air to gaze about him with somewhat of interest in his strange surroundings. Everything was marvellous and incomprehensible. Even the bearded sailors in petticoats and pigtails, which latter he took to be scalp-locks, were entirely different from the French, who, until now, were the only white men he had known. Nor could he comprehend a word of the barbarous language in which they conversed. When he was tired of looking at them he began to wonder in which direction lay the land, and to turn over in his mind a plan for making a quick rush to the ship's side, leaping overboard, and swimming to shore.
Before broaching this scheme to his comrade Nahma decided to get his bearings. So he gained his feet and mounted a scuttle-butt, by which his eyes were lifted above the level of the high bulwarks. To his consternation there was no land in sight. Not so much as a tree nor a blue hill-top could he discover in any direction. His unaccustomed eyes could not even distinguish the line of the horizon dividing a gray sky from the immensity of gray waters that stretched away on all sides. The bewildering sight filled him with a dread greater than any he had ever known, and he slipped back to his place beside Tasquanto, utterly hopeless.
"Whether we be going up or down I know not," he said to the latter; "but certain it is that we now float among the clouds, with no prospect of ever again returning to the earth on which dwell people after our own kind. Already are we become Okis."