but like enough he is dead years ago.

"Well, it would be too long a story to tell you all that happened in the
nine months I stopped in that village. The chief was very proud of me,
and used to show me off to his visitors. I had not such a very bad time
of it. I used to make myself as useful as I could. I had been a handy
sort of chap, and fond of carpentry, and I made a shift with what native
tools I could get to turn out tables and chairs, and cupboards, and such
like. All this time I was wondering how I was ever to get back again. I
used to share a hut with another slave who had been captured in war.
They generally sell them to the Arab slave-dealers to take down to the
coast, but this man was the son of a chief who had gone to war with the
fellow who owned me, and had been killed; and he kept this chap as his
slave as a sort of brag, I think.

"We got on very well together, and of course by the time we had been
there six months I got to talk their lingo, and we agreed at last that
we would try to make a bolt of it together. So one night--when it
happened that there was a great feast in the village--we slipped away as
soon as it got dark, and made south, our object being to strike one of
the Portuguese stations. We armed ourselves with bows and arrows, and
spears; and as many yams as we could carry. It would make a book, lads,
if I was to tell you all we went through before we got there. We
travelled chiefly by nights; sometimes killing a deer, sometimes getting
a few yams or heads of corn from the fields of the villages we passed.
We had one or two skrimages, but fortunately never ran against any
strong bodies of natives. By myself I should have died before I had been
gone a fortnight but Mwango was up to every dodge. He knew what roots
were good to eat, and what fruit and berries were safe. He could steal
up to a herd of deer without frightening them, and was a first-rate hand
in making pitfalls for game.

"I didn't keep no account of time, but it was somewhere about six weeks
after we had started when we came down on the banks of a biggish river.
We followed it down until, two or three days later, we came on a
village. There we stole a canoe, and paddling at night and lying up in
the day, we came after about a week to a Portuguese post. There we were
kindly received, and stopped for a month; and then I went down the river
with some traders to the coast, while Mwango took service with the
Portuguese. Six weeks l