Apokoto

The African town in which Capt. John Charity Spring's trading party meets King Gezo, several hours upstream from the coast, Apokoto is smelled long before it is seen. It consists of a huge stockade with round, beehive-shaped grass lodges. Everything is sodden except the central square. The community center is a great building constructed of human skulls. After having many times before refused to sell Spring any of his Amazon bodyguards, Gezo sells six, and their sisters rush after the crew to rescue them in a bloody battle. Crewman Kirk is returned to Apokoto for skilled tortures that keep him alive but render him impossible to identify as human.

Balliol College

A barque, built in Baltimore, MD, but ostensibly owned and registered in Mexico, and mastered by Captain John Charity Spring, a British subject, Balliol College is anchored off the coast of France when Spring brings narrator...