"They angry because sacrifices are all over for this year. Each chief blame the other for making us late."
"Do you mean that we were to have been sacrificed, but now it's too late for that?"
"Yes, sir."
"How do they know the sacrifices are finished?"
"You see soon."
And see we did, as we got closer to the skull-decked stockade. The first sight was a headless black body lying by the path. Then more and more bodies appeared. Some were headless like the first. Others had been hung from trees by their wrists and used as targets for missiles, or had been done to death in other ingenious ways. While most of the bodies were of men, some were of women. The number of corpses must have been in the hundreds. The stench was appalling.
Despite having seen much slaughter and rapine, I was a little shaken. This, I thought, was worse than the Roman gladiatorial games, or the mass burnings of children in which the Phoenicians used to engage.
The entrance to the town was a small wooden door in the stockade, so low that one had to bend double to get through it, thus affording a defender inside a fine chance to dash one's brains out. We filed in, one by one, while around us drums thundered and the Gbaru pranced in a victory dance.
They marched us to a central square, in the middle of which rose a man-high, conical pile of human heads. At one side of the square stood the palace, like the other houses of Klimoko but twice as large, with a walled compound behind it containing separate huts for the king's many wives. A pile of elephants' tusks lay beside his front door.
The fat old king of the Gbaru, gaudy in fur, feathers, and golden ornaments, sat before his thatched palace on a big wooden stool, elaborately carved and inlaid with shell and ivory. The chiefs who had commanded the war party prostrated themselves before him while the drums roared. Everybody talked at once at the top of his voice. Children screamed, dogs barked, and speckled fowl ran around amongst the feet of the crowd.
After a discussion that dragged on for hours, the king gave his decision. Sumbo explained that, since it was too late for this year's sacrifices, we should be worked as slaves and saved for the big event next year.
I thought, in that time I shall surely devise an escape, or my name is not Eudoxos Theonos. Prospects for an escape looked good. The Gbaru divided us into squads of five to ten men, each with an overseer. At night the squads were brought together in an inclosure, where we slept, guarded by several warriors. The watch was lax, however, and the watchmen often slept at their posts. The Gbaru seemed unconcerned about our trying to escape. As Sumbo explained it, if we did escape, we should soon lose ourselves in the surrounding forest and perish of starvation, snakebite, or some other misfortune.
The overseers varied like other men. Some were harsh, some mild; some were exacting, others lax. Our man was a stout black named Mabion, an easygoing and, most of the time, not unkindly fellow. He was, however, unpredictable. One day when we were cleaning the street of Klimoko, one of my sailors did something to offend him. Thereupon Mabion seemed to go mad. Screaming and foaming with rage, he plunged his spear into the unfortunate mariner and then stood over the body, stabbing it again and again. But next day Mabion was his usual sleepy, good-natured self again.
As the days passed, my efforts to organize an escape plot were repeatedly thwarted by sickness among my men. Man after man fell ill, and few recovered. Some like poor Hagnon were knocked on the head by impatient overseers when they could no longer drag themselves to work. Some were allowed to lie around the sleeping inclosure until they gave up their ghosts on their own.
With so many men sick, I began to recognize the symptoms of the principal ailments. One was an ague that gave the victim chills and fever and turned his urine the color of dark red wine. Another tinged his skin and eyeballs yellow. Still another caused a bloody flux and, usually, death in a few days. Doctor Mentor was one of the first thus carried off. Some men succumbed to an overpowering desire to sleep; they drifted off into a coma and never awoke. Others developed sores that would not heal, or parasitic worms and insects burrowed into their flesh and drove them mad with itching.
The blacks sometimes came down with similar ailments but usually recovered. The African jungle is an even sicklier place for outsiders, without immunity to its plagues and poxes, than the coast of India.
Once I caught an ague, with chills and fever. When the worst of it had passed, it left me so weak that I could barely stagger for days. However, my rugged constitution pulled me through. For years thereafter I had recurrent attacks, but the attacks weakened until now I hardly notice them.
About the time I had recovered from this ague, the overseers herded us together—the mere eighteen or twenty still alive and active—and began marching us in a single chain out the north gate. I asked Mabion what this portended.
"You will not be here any more," he said. "You palefaces are dying off so fast that the king has decided to sell you to the Mong, since there would not be enough of you left alive for the Great Sending."
This Great Sending was the annual mass human sacrifice. The victims were brought to the king, one by one. The king gave each a message to one of his dead ancestors or other kinsmen. Then the victim was slain, and his spirit was supposed to deliver the message in the afterworld. Since the king had a long pedigree with many deceased relatives, and since the victim's ghost could not be trusted to remember more than one message, there had to be one sacrifice for each message. This custom had grown until the capture of slaves from neighboring tribes for sacrifice had become the main business of the Gbaru,. For, if the supply of slaves, prisoners, and convicted malefactors gave out before all the messages had been sent, the king designated some of his subjects for the honor. He found this a convenient way to get rid of malcontents.
"What do the Mong want of us?" I asked.
Mabion grinned and slapped me heartily on the back. "Niama!" he said, this being the word for "eat" in several African tongues. He then laughed uproariously at my expression.
I recovered my self-control and said, "I do not see my friend Sumbo. Is he being traded, too?"
"Nay. Sumbo is a human being, even if he is not a Gbaru. So he will be kept for the Sending."
Evidently we palefaces were not deemed human; but I was too weary to argue, even though I was now fairly fluent in Gbaru. I shambled off into the jungle with the rest.
A day's march from Klimoko, we came to a clearing in the jungle—actually, the site of an abandoned village, not yet completely overgrown. Here we met a party of Mong. These were tall, lean blacks, completely naked like the Baga. When they smiled, they showed front teeth that had been filed to points.
On the ground lay a pile of the goods for which we were being traded: iron implements—mostly heads for spears and hoes—and some of the egg-shaped sea shells used as money hereabouts, similar to those used in India for small change.
Although the Gbaru were far ahead of the primitive Baga in the arts and crafts—making their own pots and weaving their own cloth—they did not know how to mine, smelt, and work metals. So they got their iron, copper, and bronze from more northerly tribes, who in turn got them by trade from Moors, Garamantes, and other denizens of the great desert.
Here is an opportunity for some enterprising trader, to open up a regular sea route between these lands and Gades. He would have to use my triangular sail to get back to the Pillars against wind and current. He-"would also have to enlist a black crew, to withstand the diseases of this coast. The Baga, being skilled boatmen, should be easy to train as sailors. Were I but younger ...