Whenever misfortune seemed to threaten he appeared only the more composed. Each day showed me that, even though an African and a semi-savage, yet his bearing in moments when others would have been melancholy, was dignified and truly regal. Even though his only covering was a loin-cloth and a piece of a white cotton garment wrapped about his shoulders, Omar Sanom was every inch a prince.
"If we made a dash for liberty we should, I fear, be shot down like dogs," I said.
"Yes," he answered. "The country we shall now traverse will not facilitate our flight, but the reverse. From the edge of the Great Forest to Buna, beyond the Kong mountains, it is mostly marshy hollows and pestilential swamps, while the lands beyond Buna away to Koranza, in Ashanti, are flat and open like your English pastures. We will, if opportunity offers, endeavour to escape, but even if we succeeded in eluding their vigilance death lurks everywhere in a hundred different forms."
"Well, at present we are slaves hounded on towards the dreaded Golgotha of the Ashantis," I said. "We have escaped one fate only to be threatened by one more terrible."
"True," he answered. "But down on the Coast they have an old proverb in the Negro-English jargon which says, 'Softly, softly catchee monkey.' Let us proceed cautiously, bear our trials with patience, seek not to incense these brutal Arabs against us, and we may yet tread the path that leads into my mother's kingdom. Then, within a week, the war-drums will sound and we will accompany our hosts against Samory and his hordes."
"I shall act as you direct," I replied. "If you think that by patience all may come right no complaint shall pass my lips. We are companions in misfortune, therefore let us arm ourselves against despair."
The compact thus made, we endured the toil and hardships of travel without murmur. At first our bearded masters heaped upon the queen's son every indignity they could devise, but finding they could not incense him, nor cause him to utter complaint, ceased their taunts and cuts from their loaded whips, and soon began to treat us with less severity.
Yet the fatigues of that march were terrible. The suffering I witnessed in that slave gang is still as vivid in my memory as if it were only yesterday. Ere we had passed through the great forest and gained the Kong mountains, a dozen of our unfortunate companions who had fallen sick had been left in the narrow path to be eaten alive by the driver-ants and other insects in which the gloomy depths abound, while during the twenty days which the march to the Ashanti border occupied many others succumbed to fever. Over all the marshes there hung a thick white mist deadly to all, but the more so to the starving wretches who came from the high lands far north beyond the Niger. Scarcely a day broke without one or more of the lean, weak negroes being attacked, and as a sick slave is only an incumbrance, they were left to die while we were marched onward. Whose turn it might next be to be left behind to be devoured alive none knew, and in this agony of fear and suspense we pushed forward from day to day until we at last reached the undulating grass-land that Omar told me was within a few days' march of Kumassi.
Here, even if the sun blazed down upon us like a ball of fire, it was far healthier than in the misty regions of King Fever, and at the summit of a low grass-covered hill our captors halted for two days to allow us to recuperate, fearing, we supposed, that our starved and weak condition might be made an excuse for low prices.
Soon, however, we were goaded forward again, and ere long, having traversed Mampon's country, entered the capital of King Prempeh, slaves to be sacrificed at the great annual custom.