Kunta and the men he is chained with are again taken out of the filthy hold and up to the deck. Kunta makes it a point to look at these men this time. Most of the men, having deep, festering gashes and pustules, are a lot worse off than Kunta. Kunta and the man he calls “his shacklemate” from the Wolof tribe are beaten again. Soon they are cleaned with buckets of seawater and brushes, as is the white man’s ritual to clean the prisoners. Kunta and the Wolof are full of murderous hatred for their captors as the prisoners are again made to dance so that they will keep fit.

Other toubob come in and scrape the feces from the hold every few days and now try to lessen the stink in the hold by turning vinegar to steam with red-hot pokers. When Kunta is called up to dance, he notices more and more disturbing things begin to happen. One day, a man’s leg simply looks infected. However, the next time they are up on deck, it looks grayish and rotten. Then the man disappears altogether.

The women tell the men the rest through their singing during the dance sessions: The man’s leg was cut off, but he died anyway. It is the women prisoners, all stolen from their native land just as Kunta was, who give the men the most news of the ship. The women are not forced down into the hold and are, instead, forced into the beds of the toubob to be raped each night. The women, however, keep their ears and eyes open and sing their songs while the men dance to tell them what is going on.

Kunta and the other men begin to communicate better with each other. They are all learning words that none of them knew before this horror began. Through this rough communication, Kunta learns that they have been sailing for almost a month. There is even one moment when someone asks about the village of Juffure. Kunta excitedly calls his name only to hear that the man had heard the drumbeats of Juffure mourning the loss of one of their strongest young men.

Before he can stop himself, Kunta imagines his family wailing at the white rooster dying on his back: a sign that there is no hope. Kunta is hurt so much by these memories that he vows not to think of his village or his family. They bring him too much pain.

The women sing again and tell about how there are only thirty or so white men, while there are more than sixty black men. The men in the hold start talking about possible weaknesses and purposes of the long metal sticks the toubob carry. The men begin discussing things on the ship that might be used as weapons against the toubob. Before long, two schools of thought emerge: One is that the attack should be immediate, while the other is that it would be wisest to wait for the opportune moment. Whenever the debate gets heated, the same elder who spoke to the group earlier in the voyage again reminds the men that they need to be “one village.”

The whisperings from ear to ear become more numerous. The men are also on the lookout for one of the slatee helpers whom the women sing about and who is chained in the hold below. At one point, another phrase is whispered: “All things are the will of Allah!” When Kunta’s shacklemate doesn’t pass on the phrase and even wishes for the devil instead, Kunta knows his Wolof mate is a pagan. They cannot talk again.