“Back!” shouted the young prince, lifting up his battle-axe.  “Back, all of you!  Do you not know Oroonoko?”

“Yes,” said one of the men.  “The king has sent us to take you, dead or alive.”

But when Oroonoko attacked them, they allowed him to fight his way out of the otan, but tore the maid from his arms and took her to the king.  The old man was blind with rage, and, seizing a spear, he staggered to his feet, determined to kill her by his own hand.  But Imoinda was in no mood to die.  She knew that her lover had fled to his camp, and intended to return at the head of a large army and rescue her by main force.  If she could only calm the anger of the old king for a few days, all would be well.  So, with the guile of a woman, she flung herself at the king’s feet, protesting in a flood of tears, that Oroonoko had broken into her room and taken her by force.

“Very well,” said the old king, with a cruel look in his eyes, “I will forgive you.  Having received the royal veil, you cannot marry my grandson.  On the other hand, since he has entered your room, you cannot remain any longer in the otan.  You must be sent out of the country.”

And early the next morning some of his servants were commanded to dress her so that she could not be recognised, and then she was carried down to the shore and sold to the captain of a slave ship.

The king did not dare to tell his grandson that he had sold Imoinda as a slave, for the Coromantiens justly reckon slavery as something worse than death; so he sent a messenger to say that she was dead.  At first, Oroonoko was minded to attack his grandfather, but better feelings prevailed; and he led his army against a hostile nation, resolved to perish on the battlefield.  So desperate was his courage that he defeated his far more numerous foes, and took a great multitude of them captives.  Many of these he sold to the captain of a slave-ship, then lying off Coromantien.  When the bargain was concluded, the captain invited the prince and all his attendants to a banquet on board his ship, and so plied them with wine that, being unaccustomed to drink of this sort, they were overcome by it.

When Oroonoko recovered his senses, he found himself chained up in a dark room, and all his men were groaning in fetters around him.  The cunning slave-dealer had got out of paying for his cargo of slaves, and increased their number by carrying off the young prince and his companions.  This was how I came to meet Oroonoko.  The unscrupulous slave-dealer brought him to Surinam, and sold him and seventeen of his followers to our overseer, a young Cornishman named Trefry.

Trefry, a man of great wit and fine learning, was attracted by the noble bearing of Oroonoko, and treated him more as a friend than as a servant.  And when, to his great astonishment, he found that the young prince was his equal in scholarship, and could converse with him in English, French, and Spanish, he asked him how it was he had become a slave.  Oroonoko then related the story of the slave-dealer’s treachery, and Trefry was so moved by it that he promised to find the means to free him from slavery and enable him to return to Coromantien.