the slave-gang!

The Arabs were about making what they call a "tiri-kesa"--that is, an
evening journey--in order to reach water before noon next day, by which
time they would probably have made a march of thirty miles. They had
camped deep in the woods, about half a mile from the road. Had it not
been for the smoke of their fires, Kalulu would never have seen them,
probably. When once their fires went out it would be difficult for
anybody to know that a slave-gang had been there, or that such a cruel
deed as the kidnapping of Kalulu had ever taken place. If the Arabs but
continued their journey until noon, and started again at night, and left
no trace behind, how would it be possible for those who would seek
Kalulu to find a trace of him?

What a change of feeling came over the outraged youth! What a sudden
and complete transformation was this! He left a camp of Arabs to enter
another. In one, he was beloved, esteemed, idolised; in the other, he
was a slave, beaten like a dog, chained! In one camp the Arabs were
good, kind, brotherly; in the other, they were robbers, kidnappers,
enslavers, villains. In one camp he esteemed, he admired, he loved; in
another, he brooded over his injuries, and he hated with all the hate
with which one wronged is able to hate.

If he was treated so harshly at the beginning of his slavery; if he was
the victim of such damnable atrocity as that which he had suffered, by
what rule or system could be measured that which he would have to suffer
before he reached Zanzibar; and at Zanzibar, with that iron collar
perpetually about his neck, how could he ever advantage himself? Would
there ever be an end to the indescribable misery he suffered now? Had
he parted for ever from freedom and friendship? Would there ever be
hope for him more?

These were the thoughts that filled his mind as he was marched off to
slavery with that inflexible iron collar about his neck, and the horrid
chain swinging from one side to the other, with that long file of slaves
before him, and the long file of flinty kidnappers behind him.

Ah! poor Kalulu! Thou art but one of the thousands upon thousands of
wretched men, women, and children who have trodden that road to its
present hardness and smoothness; whose wild delirious thoughts have
never found speech as thine have; whose hopeless looks have never been
portrayed in any book; whose silent prayers have never seen the light,
nor have been rehearsed in a