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then, when they were ordered to gather around and share ten to a bucket, eating with their dirty hands, could he see how many of them were sickening to death. They were the ones who did not struggle and claw at each other to get to the food. Mehuru set himself the task of fighting for his share and then giving half of it to the neighbor on his right. He did it as an exercise, a discipline, not an act of love. He thought he would never love anyone, ever again.
    When he had eaten, and the slowly dying man beside him had mumbled on his slabber porridge, Mehuru would shut his eyes and try to build a picture of a perfect tiny snake as an offering for the god.
    He knew that his mind was going when the snake became very bright and easy to find. The snake became more important than the ship, more vivid than the clammy touch of the dying man beside him. The snake opened his mouth and sang to him as Mehuru felt his skin grow wet with sweat and his mind shift and slide away from the darkness. He knew he should stay in his waking mind and guard Siko, but he had not seen Siko, except for a glimpse on deck, since they had set sail. He knew he had failed in his duty to him. He knew he was guilty of a mortal sin in taking the boy into danger. But he could not keep himself alert, could not stay on guard. As they went farther and farther west, Mehuru sank into a deep, deathly indifference.
    He could not tell how long they had been sailing, but when they came on deck to dance, there were more limp bodies thrown overboard and there were fewer who could dance each time. Mehuru looked around idly for the children, the little ones who had been loaded on the ship as round as berries and as dark and shiny as the sacred wood of the iroko tree. They were thinner, and many of them were sick, but worst of all wasthe way the bright life was draining from them. They no longer cried like desperate fledglings for their mothers; they were lost children. Whether they lived or died, there would be a gap in their spirits that nothing would ever replace. How would they respect their fathers and how love children of their own, if their most powerful memory was being abandoned to despair?
    He thought that about forty had died, and two crewmen as well, when the sound of the ship changed one night. Then came urgent noises of running on the deck overhead, and abrupt commands and anxious shouts, and then the great rolling yaw of the ship ceased, ceased at last, and he heard the roar as the anchor chain sped out through the housing and the ship thrust a claw into the ocean bed and dragged herself to a standstill. They were brought up on deck as if to be ready for dancing, but then they were manacled, arms to legs, and chained from one neck to another. The captain, even whiter than before and thinner from the voyage, looked at each shivering black man or woman or little child before he waved them into the line and had them locked onto the chain. A few, a very few, he waved to one side under guard of a sailor who held a musket easily at their heads. Mehuru thought of the unreliability of the muskets on sale in Africa and thought it might be worth taking the chance and rushing the man. But when he looked around to see where he might run, he felt sicker than he had felt in the whole long voyage. For they were not off the coast of Africa anymore. Wherever they had come to, it was a land he had never seen before.
    The last of his courage went out of him then, and when the captain waved him to the little group, he went as weakly as the children who were already chosen. The last time he saw Siko was when the boy hobbled obediently to the long chain and bowed his neck to the collar. Mehuru tried to find a voice to call to him, to wish him well, to promise to return to find him if he possibly could. He was dumb. Siko looked at him, a long look of reproach and despair, and Mehuru could find no words atall. He dropped his gaze and turned away, and when they were ordered back down