After some time, the old man told the emir and his court, my master took me to Ìsẹ́yìn and sold me to a Mussulman woman. I lived with her and her son, who was about the same age as I, for a few months and then she, too, took me to a slave market and put me up for sale. I walked with my new master for a few days and finally he brought me to a slave market on the coast, on the bank of a large river. I had never seen anything like it in my life and it filled my heart with fear. Before the sun had set, I was bartered for tobacco and became another owner’s property. At once, my new master announced he was taking me across the river, to the slave market on the island of Èkó. Nothing terrified me more than the river and the thought of going to Èkó because I knew – every one of us slaves knew, because we’d heard our masters talk about it – that one part of the town was occupied by white men, who had come to buy slaves to take to their land far away; far, far, across the ocean. When I was told to enter the river, to walk across the sandbank of the water to the canoe that would take us to Èkó, I stood quivering on one spot. Night was approaching, and the men had no time to spare; they picked me up and carried me into the canoe and placed me among the corn bags. I sat crouched; my whole body shook and then became stiff from terror. My eyes were red and swollen from crying. I was still in this same position when, several hours later – it was four o’clock in the morning – we reached Èkó.
In Èkó, I was allowed to go any way I pleased; there was no way to escape, it was an island, we were completely surrounded by water. Although I was there for more than three months, I didn’t once set eyes on a white man – until one evening when not one but six white men – Spaniards and Portuguese – came walking down the street. Even then, I dared not look directly at them. I thought if I did, they would notice me, and I didn’t want them to notice me. I suspected they’d come for me, so I cast my eyes down hoping that they wouldn’t see me if I didn’t see them. They did see me that day, but they weren’t in the least interested in me. But they were back a few days later. This time, I was made the eighth in a number of slaves one of the white men bought.
I had by now become something of an old hand in servitude. I had lost all hope of ever seeing my country again and had learnt to be patient, and to take whatever came. But it was not without fear and trembling that I received, for the first time, the touch of a white man, who examined me to see whether I was a sound purchase or not.
We were herded together in a room with one door, which was locked as soon as we entered, with no passage for air other than the opening under the eaves. Men and boys were at first chained together; the chain thrust through an iron fetter on the neck of every individual and fastened at both ends with locks. It was torture for everyone, particularly so for us boys: the men sometimes, getting angry, would pull the chain so violently, it would cut into our bony little necks. It was worse at sleep time, when they drew the chain close to ease themselves of its weight so they could lie better. You had two choices: either to be strangled until you stopped breathing or to be gouged to death. When fights broke out at night between two or more men, as often happened, everybody suffered.
At last, as more men were added from the slave market to the drove, the boys had the joy of being separated from the men and corded together by themselves. Manacled together, we did everything together. We ate together, we washed together . . . The girls and the women fared no better.
We lived this way in Lagos, which was what the white men called Èkó, for four months.
This was in the year of our Lord 1822. At that time, fifty-eight years ago, in the United Kingdom, the slave trade had already been abolished; it was a crime to trade in human beings. It had been a crime for fifteen years. But only in the United Kingdom. Not so in some other places. Spaniard and Portuguese boats were still sailing the seas to these African shores to fill their cargo holds with slaves. So, the English Navy sent out boats to cruise the coasts off our shores looking for slavers. This was why we had to spend months in Lagos after we were sold to the white men, months after the Portuguese trader who bought me had acquired enough human cargo to fill his hold. It was because it was deemed too risky to take us to the ship. English Navy boats had been seen lurking on the waves.
At last, after four months of waiting, the coast was deemed clear, and one night we were bundled out of Lagos by canoe, nearly two hundred of us: boys and girls, men and women. Before dawn the next morning, we were on board the ship. We hadn’t eaten the night before; the crew were too busy loading us into the canoes to give us our evening meal. And we didn’t eat that morning, because they were too busy loading us on to the ship, which was waiting out at sea. Not that we were, any of us, in any fit state to hold down a morsel, let alone eat a meal. As the ship bobbed up the waves and down, the world spun before our eyes from an illness they called seasickness.
That same evening, we were accosted by two English warships, and we found ourselves in the hands of a new band of conquerors, fearsome men armed with long swords.
Our chains were cast off and our owner and his men suddenly found themselves in shackles. Only the cook was left unshackled, and only because he was preparing our morning meal. We were hungry and hunger made us bold. We took the liberty of ranging about the vessel in search of fruits and plunder of every kind. We quickly sobered up when, after breakfast, we were divided into several of the vessels around us. We did not know where they were taking us or whether our misery would end. By now we had all become one big family and as each batch entered a vessel to depart, we took affectionate leave of them, not knowing what would become of them or what would happen to us. Six of us, brothers in affliction, kept very close so that we might be carried away at the same time, and soon we were conveyed into a man-of-war, the HMS Myrmidon. After nearly two months’ sailing, we landed in Freetown, over a thousand miles from Lagos.
In Sierra Leone, I was put under the care of the Church Missionary Society. And being convinced that I was a sinner, and desiring to obtain pardon through Jesus Christ, I became a Christian, and was baptised Samuel Crowther, casting aside the name Àjàyí.
I also joined the mission school.