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They were all soon being shoved and whipped toward where another chain of ten men was being doused with buckets of seawater drawn up from over the side. Then other toubob with long-handled brushes were scrubbing the screaming men. Kunta screamed, too, as the drenching salt water hit him, stinging like fire in his own bleeding whip cuts and the burned place on his back. He cried even louder as the stiff brush bristles not only loosened and scraped off some of his body’s crusted filth but also tore open his scabbed lash cuts. He saw the water frothing and pinkish at their feet. Then they were herded back toward the center of the deck, where they flopped down in a huddle. Kunta gawked upward to see toubob springing about on the poles like monkeys, pulling at the many ropes among the great white cloths. Even in Kunta’s shock, the heat of the sun felt warm and good, and he felt an incredible sense of relief that his skin was freed of some of its filth.

A sudden chorus of cries brought the chained men jerking upright. About twenty women, most of them teen-aged, and four children, came running naked and without chains from behind the barricade, ahead of two grinning toubob with whips. Kunta instantly recognized the girls who had been brought on board with him—as with flooding rage he watched all of the toubob leering at their nakedness, some of them even rubbing their fotos. By sheer force of will, he fought the urge to go lunging after the nearest toubob despite their weapons. Hands clutched into fists, he sucked hard for air to keep breathing, wrenching his eyes away from the terrified women.

Then a toubob near the rail began pulling out and pushing in between his hands some peculiar folding thing that made a wheezing sound. Another joined in, beating on a drum from Africa, as other toubob now moved themselves into a ragged line with the naked men, women, and children staring at them. The toubob in the line had a length of rope, and each of them looped one ankle within it, as if that rope was a length of chain such as linked the naked men. Smiling now, they began jumping up and down together in short hops, keeping in time with the drumbeats and the wheezing thing. Then they and the other armed toubob gestured for the men in chains to jump in the same manner. But when the chained men continued to stand as if petrified, the toubobs’ grins became scowls, and they began laying about with whips.

“Jump!” shouted the oldest woman suddenly, in Mandinka. She was of about the rains of Kunta’s mother Binta. Bounding out, she began jumping herself. “Jump!” she cried shrilly again, glaring at the girls and children, and they jumped as she did. “Jump to kill toubob!” she shrieked, her quick eyes flashing at the naked men, her arms and hands darting in the movements of the warrior’s dance. And then, as her meaning sank home, one after another shackled pair of men began a weak, stumbling hopping up and down, their chains clanking against the deck. With his head down, Kunta saw the welter of hopping feet and legs, feeling his own legs rubbery under him as his breath came in gasps. Then the singing of the woman was joined by the girls. It was a happy sound, but the words they sang told how these horrible toubob had taken every woman into the dark corners of the canoe each night and used them like dogs. “Toubob fa!” (Kill toubob) they shrieked with smiles and laughter. The naked, jumping men joined in: “Toubob fa!” Even the toubob were grinning now, some of them clapping their hands with pleasure.

But Kunta’s knees began to buckle beneath him and his throat went tight when he saw, approaching him, the short, stocky toubob with white hair, and with him the huge, scowling one with the knife-scarred face who also had been at that place where Kunta was examined and beaten and choked and burned before he was brought here. In an instant, as the other naked people saw these two, a sudden silence fell, and the only sound to be heard was that of great, slapping cloths overhead, for even the rest of