"We lay there all that night, and I believe I should have died of thirst if a nigger wench had not taken compassion on us and given us a drink. The next morning our ropes were undone. Our first look when we got up was naturally towards the ship. There she lay, with a dozen native craft round her. Her decks were black with niggers, and they were hard at work stripping her. No one paid much attention to us, for there was nowhere we could run to; and we sat down together and talked over our chances. We saw nothing of our shipmates; and whether they were all killed, or whether some of them were put aboard the native craft, I never knew. They were some days unloading and stripping the ship, and they had big quarrels over the division of the spoil. I think the fellows with boats did our natives out of their share, beyond what fell into their hands when they first attacked us. However, at last it was all done; then two chiefs came and had a look at us, and one took me and Tom Longstaff, and another took the other two. "We had not done badly for eating while we were on shore, for there was several barrels of pork and biscuits among the lot we had landed, and we were free to take as much as we wanted. The other bales and boxes were all broken open and the contents made up into packets, and Tom and I and about sixty niggers, each with as much as he could stagger under, started away from the shore. It wasn't a long march, for their village lay only about six miles away. We knew it could not be far, because the women and children had come down to the beach two or three hours after the fight was over. We stopped here about a month, and then one morning the chief and four of his men started off with Tom and me. We made three days' marches, such marches as I never want to do again. Tom and I did our best to keep up; but the last day we were quite worn out, and if it hadn't been that they thumped us with their spears and prodded us up, we should never have done it. "The place we got to was a deal bigger than the first village. We were left outside the biggest hut with the four fellows to guard us, while the chief went inside. Presently he came out again with a chap quite different to himself. He was brown instead of being black, and dressed quite different; and having been trading up in the Persian Gulf I knew him to be an Arab. He looked us over as if we had been bullocks he intended to buy, and then went into the hut again. A few minutes later our chief came out and made signs to us that we belonged to the Arab now, and then went away with his men, and we never saw him again. We had an easy time of it for the next week, and then the Arab started with a number of carriers laden with goods for the interior.