366 SHIPWRECK OF tHE MtD^SA. 
cultivating thy fields, and carried far, far from thy family, 
wouldst thou not endeavor to rejoin them, and recover thy li- 
berty?" My father promptly replied, "I would!" "Very 
well," continued Nakamou, " I am in the same situation as 
thyself; I am the father of a numerous family; I have yet a 
mother and some uncles ; I love my v^ife and children, and dost 
thou think it wonderful I should wish to rejoin them?" My 
unfortunate father, melted to tears with this speech, resolved 
to send them to the person from whom he had hired them, for 
fear he should lose them. If he had thought like the colo- 
nists, he would have put them in irons, and treated them like 
rebels ; but he was too kind-hearted to resort to such mea- 
sures. Some days after, the person to whom the negroes were 
sent brought us two others ; but they were so indolent we found 
it impossible to make them work. 
We however continued sowing ; and more than twenty 
thousand feet of cotton had already been added to the planta- 
tion, when our labors were stopped by war suddenly breaking 
out between the colony and the Moors. We learned that a 
part of their troops were in the island of Bokos, situated a 
short distance from our own. It was said that the Arab mer- 
chants and the Marabouts (priests of the Mussulmans) M-ho 
usually travel to Senegal on aifairs of commerce, had been 
arrested by the French soldiers. In the fear that the Moors 
would come to our island and make us prisoners, we resolved 
to go to the head-quarters of the colony, and stay there till the 
war had ceased. My father caused all his effects to be trans- 
ported to the house of the resident at Babaguey, after which 
we left our cottage and the island of Safal. Whilst Etienne 
slowly rowed the canoe which contained our family, 1 ran my 
eye over the places we were leaving, as if wishing them an 
eternal adieu. In contemplating our poor cottage, which we 
had built with such difficulty, I could not suppress my tears. 
All our plantations, thought I, will be ravaged during our ab- 
sence ; our home will be burned, and we will lose in an in- 
stant that which cost us two years of pain and fatigue. I 
was diverted from these reflections by our canoe striking 
against the shore of Babaguey. We landed there, and in 
stantly set off to the residence of M. Lerouge; but he was 
already at Senegal. We found his house filled with soldiers, 
which the governor had sent to defend that position against 
the Moors. My father then borrowed a little shallop to take 
us to Senegal. Whilst the boat was preparing we ate a mor- 
sel of millet bread I had had the precaution to make before 
