They passed the night in the huts which had been assigned to them by the king, and bright and early the next morning the work of loading the boats was begun. Doctor Bronson had promised the captains an extra present if they would hurry matters as much as possible, and he certainly had no cause of complaint. The boatmen were assisted by a gang of the king's slaves, who were brought from a neighboring field, where they had been carrying fuel and cultivating rice. Though M'tesa had become a Christian he had not reached the point of looking upon slavery as at all incompatible with his new religion. He not only kept a large number of slaves, most of them captives taken in wars with his neighbors, but he had no objection to dealing in human merchandise whenever he could make a good bargain. When he was told that it was not proper for a Christian to hold slaves, or buy and sell them, he replied that a good deal of the slave-trade of Africa was owing to the encouragement of Christian nations, and asked if there had never been any slaves in England and America. He even made quotations from the Bible in support of his theory, and threw several difficulties in the way of a free discussion of the subject. [Illustration: AN AFRICAN DRUM-CORPS.] By the middle of the forenoon everything was ready, and the signal was given for departure. There was a good deal more noise in the signal than had been bargained for, as it was made by a band of music of twenty pieces--rather a monotonous array, and a noisy one, as each piece was a drum. Every drummer played with all his might. Time was kept by a leader, who stood in front of the musicians, with a smaller and lighter drum than any of the rest. Frank said it reminded him of the way in which the celebrated Strauss conducts an orchestra, by making free use of a violin instead of confining himself to a baton. The drums lay upon the ground, and had a strong resemblance to a battery of mortars ready for siege operations. Fred thought the performance could be improved by charging each drum with a few pounds of powder and firing the whole lot at once, as a grand finale.