The question now arose, what were we to do next, and whither should we direct our steps? We could not lurk for ever in the wilderness, and yet we hardly dared to enter any town or village. “We certainly cannot go towards Sálaga,” said Aminé, “for there we should meet that old thief Salifu and a hundred others like him. The place is full of slave dealers.” “Dost thou know anything of the road to the west?” I inquired. “Not I,” she replied. “I know that somewhere in the west is Bontúku and, beyond that, Kong in the Wongára country, but how far away I cannot tell.” “We had best walk towards the west,” I said, “for we shall at least lengthen our distance from Sálaga, and perhaps we may meet friends on the road.” “It is more likely that we shall meet enemies,” she answered, “for anyone can see that we are runaway slaves, and if we go into any town, the first travelling merchant that we meet will claim us and say that we have escaped from him. Now if we only had a little decent clothing according to the fashion of our country, no one would notice or molest us, but we are as naked as a pair of black bush people.” This was only too true. Had we been clothed in the Fulah fashion we should have presented nothing unusual, whereas, although we had as much clothing as most of the negroes of the district, our fair skins, straight hair, and regular features were quite out of character with our condition, and marked us at once as fugitives. However, some move had to be made, and as we were certainly not encumbered by baggage, we crossed the stream forthwith and took our way along the track westward; and I was pleased to see that Aminé, without any suggestion from me, now carried her sandals slung round her neck by a wisp of creeper, to avoid leaving any more tell-tale impressions on the ground. We wandered on at an easy pace, browsing as we went. Some of the trees had ripe fruit on them--little sloe-like plums, very bitter and astringent, which Aminé devoured freely--and we met with a number of dwarf date-palms bearing small, orange-coloured dates which we both ate although they were dry and insipid; and with these and various odds and ends of wild fruit that we picked up, we postponed, rather than satisfied, our hunger for several hours.