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Barking out something hoarsely, the huge one cleared the other toubob away from the chained people. From his belt there dangled a large ring of the slender, shiny things that Kunta had glimpsed others using as they had opened the chains. And then the white-haired one went moving among the naked people, peering closely at their bodies. Wherever he saw whip cuts badly festered, or pus draining from rat bites or burned places, he smeared on some grease from a can that the huge one handed to him. Or the huge one himself would sprinkle a yellowish powder from a container on wrists and ankles that became a sickly, moist, grayish color beneath the iron cuffs. As the two toubob moved nearer to him, Kunta shrank in fear and fury, but then the white-haired one was smearing grease on his festering places and the huge one was sprinkling his ankles and wrists with the yellowish powder, neither of them seeming even to recognize who Kunta was.

Then, suddenly, amid rising shouts among the toubob, one of the girls who had been brought with Kunta was springing wildly between frantic guards. As several of them went clutching and diving for her, she hurled herself screaming over the rail and went plunging downward. In the great shouting commotion, the white-haired toubob and the huge one snatched up whips and with bitter curses lashed the backs of those who had gone sprawling after, letting her slip from their grasp.

Then the toubob up among the cloths were yelling and pointing toward the water. Turning in that direction, the naked people saw the girl bobbing in the waves—and not far away, a pair of dark fins coursing swiftly toward her. Then came another scream—a blood-chilling one—then a frothing and thrashing, and she was dragged from sight, leaving behind only a redness in the water where she had been. For the first time, no whips fell as the chained people, sick with horror, were herded back into the dark hold and rechained into their places. Kunta’s head was reeling. After the fresh air of the ocean, the stench smelled even worse than before, and after the daylight, the hold seemed even darker. When soon a new disturbance arose, seeming somewhat distant, his practiced ears told him that the toubob were driving up onto the deck the terrified men from the level below.

After a while, he heard near his right ear a low mutter. “Jula?” Kunta’s heart leaped. He knew very little of the Wolof tongue, but he did know that Wolof and some others used the word jula to mean travelers and traders who were usually Mandinkas. And twisting his head a bit closer to the Wolof’s ear, Kunta whispered, “Jula. Mandinka.” For moments, as he lay tensely, the Wolof made no return sound. It went flashing through Kunta’s head that if he could only speak many languages, as his father’s brothers did—but he was ashamed to have brought them to this place, even in his thoughts.

“Wolof. Jebou Manga,” the other man whispered finally, and Kunta knew that was his name.

“Kunta Kinte,” he whispered back.

Exchanging a whisper now and then in their desperation to communicate, they picked at each other’s minds to learn a new word here, another there, in their respective tongues. It was much as they had learned their early words as first-kafo children. During one of the intervals of silence between them, Kunta remembered how when he had been a lookout against the baboons in the groundnut fields at night, the distant fire of a Fulani herdsman had given him a sense of comfort and he had wished that there had been some way he could exchange words with this man he had never seen. It was as if that wish were being realized now, except that it was with a Wolof, unseen for the weeks they had been lying there shackled to each other.

Every Wolof expression Kunta had ever heard he now dragged from his memory. He knew that the Wolof was doing the same with Mandinka words, of which he knew more than Kunta knew of Wolof words. In another time of silence between them, Kunta sensed that the man who lay on his other side, who never had made any