Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [101]
But they were not alone. In the commotion, a toubob had been trapped down there with them. He dashed this way and that in the darkness, stumbling and bumping into the shelves, screaming in terror, scrambling up when he fell and dashing off again. His howlings sounded like some primeval beast’s. “Toubob fa!” somebody shouted, and other voices joined him: “Toubob fa! Toubob fa!” They shouted, louder and louder, as more and more men joined the chorus. It was as if the toubob knew they meant it for him, and pleading sounds came from him as Kunta lay silent as if frozen, none of his muscles able to move. His head was pounding, his body poured out sweat, he was gasping to breathe. Suddenly the hatch cover was snatched open and a dozen toubob came pounding down the stairs into the dark hold. Some of their whips had slashed down onto the trapped toubob before he could make them realize he was one of them.
Then, under viciously lashing whips, the men were again unchained and beaten, kicked back up onto the deck, where they were made to watch as four toubob with heavy whips beat and cut into a pulpy mess the headless body of the Wolof. The chained men’s naked bodies shone with sweat and blood from their cuts and sores, but scarcely a sound came from among them. Every one of the toubob was heavily armed now, and murderous rage was upon their faces as they stood in a surrounding ring, glaring and breathing heavily. Then the whips lashed down again as the naked men were beaten back down into the hold and rechained in their places.
For a long while, no one dared even to whisper. Among the torrent of thoughts and emotions that assailed Kunta when his terror had subsided enough for him to think at all was the feeling that he wasn’t alone in admiring the courage of the Wolof, who had died as a warrior was supposed to. He remembered his own tingling anticipation that the Foulah leader would at any instant signal an attack—but that signal hadn’t come. Kunta was bitter, for whatever might have happened would have been all over now; and why not die now? What better time was going to come? Was there any reason to keep hanging onto life here in this stinking darkness? He wished desperately that he could communicate as he once did with his shacklemate, but the Wolof was a pagan.
Mutterings of anger at the Foulah’s failure to act were cut short by his dramatic message: The attack, he announced, would come the next time the men on their level of the hold were on deck being washed and jumping in their chains, when the toubob seemed most relaxed. “Many among us will die,” the Foulah said, “as our brother has died for us—but our brothers below will avenge us.”
There was grunting approval in the murmurings that circulated now. And Kunta lay in the darkness listening to the raspings of a stolen file rubbing against chains. He knew for weeks that the file marks had been carefully covered with filth so that the toubob wouldn’t see. He lay fixing in his mind the faces of those who turned the great wheel of the canoe, since their lives were the only ones to be spared.
But during that long night in the hold, Kunta and the other men began to hear an odd new sound they had never heard before. It seemed to be coming through the deck from over their heads. Silence fell rapidly in the hold and, listening intently, Kunta guessed that stronger winds must be making the great white cloths flap much harder than usual. Soon there was another sound, as if rice was falling onto the deck; he guessed after a