But When Their Moons Were All Complete, Instead Of Being
Sent Home With Their Pay To "We Country," They Were Put Off From
Time To Time; And Month After Month Went By And They Were Still On
San Thome, And Still Hoeing.
At last the home-sick men, in despair
of ever getting free, started off secretly in ones and twos
To try
and get to "We country" across hundreds of miles of the storm-
haunted Atlantic in small canoes, and with next to no provisions.
The result was a tragedy, but it might easily have been worse; for a
few, a very few, were picked up alive by English vessels and taken
back to their beloved "We country" to tell the tale. But many a
canoe was found with a dead Kruboy or so in it; and many a one
which, floating bottom upwards, graphically spoke of madness caused
by hunger, thirst, and despair having driven its occupants overboard
to the sharks.
My Portuguese friends assure me that there was never thought of
permanently detaining the boys, and that they were only just keeping
them until other labourers arrived to take their place on the
plantations. I quite believe them, for I have seen too much of the
Portuguese in Africa to believe that they would, in a wholesale way,
be cruel to natives. But I am not in the least surprised that the
poor Krumen took the Portuguese logo and amanha for Eternity itself,
for I have frequently done so.
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