'Perhaps, later,' I said. 'I am browsing now.'
'Browse as you will, Master,' said Uchafu. 'You will find that we have here the finest slaves in all Schendi.' He had lost several teeth and was blind in one eye. His robe was filthy, and stained with food and blood. A long knife, unsheathed, was thrust into his sash.
'Why is that girl blindfolded?' I asked, indicating a girl, kneeling with other girls, chained, under a low, palm-thatched platform.
'Why to keep her quiet, Master,' said Uchafu.
I nodded. It is a device often used by slavers.
Uchafu then hobbled away.
'Buy me, Master,' said a girl near me. I glanced at her, and then passed by, moving down the row.
It was muddy in the market, for it had rained yesterday afternoon and evening, after our arrival in Schendi. The air was steamy. One could smell the vegetation and jungles behind the port. Uchafu's market was back of the merchant wharves, nearer the harbor mouth. It was on a canal, called the Fish canal, leading back from the harbor. It is adjacent, on the south, to a large market where river fish are peddled for consumption in Schendi. These are brought literally through the harbor by canoes, moving among the larger ships, from the fishing villages of the Nyoka and then delivered via the canal to the market. There are also a number of small shops in the vicinity. The official name of the canal is the Tangawizi canal, or Ginger canal, but it is generally called, because of the market, the Fish canal.
'Buy me, Master,' said another girl, as I passed her. She was brown-skinned and sweet-legged.
There were only, by my conjecture, at the time I was in the market of Uchafu, some two hundred and fifty girls there. Uchafu was not at his full stock at that time. He handled most of his own business but was assisted by four younger men, one of whom was his brother. In spite of the fact that he was not at full inventory he crowded his girls, leaving several of the small, open-sided, palm-thatched shelter, those about the outer wall, a low, boarded wall, empty.
Most of the girls were black, as would be expected from the area, but there were some ten or fifteen white girls there, and some two girls apparently of oriental or mixed extraction.
'Master,' said a red-haired girl, reaching forth her hand, timidly, not daring to touch me.
I looked at her.
Fearfully she drew hack her hand.
I moved farther down the row. Two black girls shrank back. I gathered they were new to their collars.
I then shifted my attention to another of the small shelters. They are some twenty feet long and five feet deep, and four feet high. Two heavy posts are sunk deeply into the ground at each end of each shelter. A chain runs between these posts. Each girl, on her left ankle, wean an ankle ring, with a loop of chain and a lock. By means of the loop of chain and lock she is attached to the central chain. Some of the girls also wore slave bracelets or other devices, fastening their hands before or behind their bodies. One girl, lying on her shoulder in the mud, was cruelly trussed, hand and foot, with binding fiber. Perhaps she had not been fully pleasing.
I crouched down beside a thick-ankled blond girl. I pulled her to me by the hair, and turned her head to one side. I examined her collar. The legend had once read 'I am the girl of Kikombe'. The name 'Kikombe' now, however, for the most part, with a set of rough, zigzag lines, had been scratched out, and the name 'Uchafu', with a sharp tool, had been added. I smiled. Uchafu even used second-hand collars. The Kurii were clever. Surely one would not search for a valuable girl in such a market.
'Do you like her?' asked Uchafu, who had come up near to me again. He had kept a close eye on me. 'I had her from Kikombe honestly,' he said.
'I do not doubt it,' I said. I gathered he thought mo possibly an agent tracing smuggled slaves.
It had not been for no reason that I had seemed to express interest in the thick-ankled blond.
'Do you like white girls?' asked Uchafu.
'Yes,' I said.
'They make superb slaves,' said Uchafu.
'Yes,' I said.
'This one is a beauty,' he said, indicating the girl whose collar I had just examined.
'Have you others?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said.
'Have you others with hair of this sort? I asked.
'Yes,' he said. But he looked at me, suddenly, warily.
I looked about, over the shelter near us to those at the far wall, which were empty. 'You have empty shelters over there,' I said. 'Why do you put so many girls together? Would it not be better to space them farther apart, for purposes of display?'
'It is easier to feed and clean them this way,' he said. There is less area to be covered.'
'I see,' I said.
'Besides,' he said, 'later in the month I am expecting deliveries and I will then need that space.'
There were weeds and grass growing about the interior perimeter of the low board fence encircling the market. The fence was some four feet high. A small wooden hut, with a roof thatched with palm leaves, at one corner of the compound, served as house and office for Uchafu and, I suspect, dormitory for his assistants.
'You seem to have no male slaves,' I observed.
'They are now scarce in Schendi,' he said. 'Bila Huruma, Ubar of Lake Ushindi, uses them for work on his great canal.'
'He intends to join Lakes Ushindi and Ngao, I have heard,' I said.
'It is a mad project,' said Uchafu, 'but what can one expect of the barbarians of the interior?'
'It would open the Ua river to the sea,' I said.
'If it were successful,' said Uchafu. 'But it will never be accomplished. Thousands of men have already died. They perish in the heat, they die in the sun, they are killed by hostile tribes, they are destroyed by insects, they are eaten by tharlarion. It is a mad and hopeless venture, costly in money and wasteful in human life.'
'It must be difficult to obtain so many male slaves,' I said.
'Most who work on the canal are not slaves,' said Uchafu. 'Many are debtors or criminals. Many are simply common men, impressed into service, victims of work levies imposed on the villages. Indeed, only this year Bila Huruma has demanded quotas of men from Schendi herself.'
'These have, of course, been refused,' I said.
'We have strengthened our defenses,' said Uchafu, 'reinforcing the palisaded walls which shield Schendi from the interior, but we must not delude ourselves. Those walls were built to keep back animals and bands of brigands, not an army of thousands of men. We are not an armed city, not a fortress, not a land power. We do not even have a navy. We are only a merchant port.'
'You have, of course, nonetheless refused the request of Bila Huruma for men,' I said.
'If he wishes,' said Uchafu, 'he could enter and burn Schendi.'
'Barbarians from the interior?' I asked.
'Bila Huruma has an army at his command, organized, trained, disciplined, effective,' said Uchafu. 'He manages a Ubarate, with districts and governors, with courts and spies and messengers.'
'I did not know anything of this breadth and power existed in the south,' I said.
'It is a great Ubarate,' said Uchafu, 'but it is little known for it is of the interior.'
I said nothing.
'Schendi,' said he, 'is like a flower at the feet of a kailiauk.'
'You have then acceded to his request for men?' I said.
'Yes,' said Uchafu.
'I am sorry,' I said.
Uchafu shrugged. 'But do not concern yourself with our troubles,' he said, 'for you are not of Schendi.' He then turned about. 'Have you seen the red-headed girl?' he asked. 'She is very nice.'
'Yes,' I said, 'I have seen her.' I looked about. 'There is a blond-haired girl over there,' I said, indicating the girl in the blindfold, kneeling chained, crowded together with other girls, under one of the small, thatched roofs, on its poles. She was dirty. Her knees were in the mud. Her left ankle, like that of the other girls, was fastened in an ankle ring. She, like the others, was, by the loop of chain and lock, run through the chain ring on the ankle ring,
