STARTING THE CAMPAIGNTHE ELDERS RETURNED TO THEIR own islands and began calling for volunteers for the army. There was no shortage of warriors eager to serve Adamuka and their empire. The elders selected the best among them, to the disappointment of those left behind. “We shall go anyway,” many decided. The elders discouraged them as kindly as they could, telling them that the trip alone could take more than six moons and their small canoes would never last in the rough seas they expected to find on the way. Besides, all the calculations had been made on the amount of food they could carry in the ships and the number of warriors it could support.
The following months were filled with preparations to assemble the massive army. Giant canoes criss-crossed the Pacific carrying warriors, timbe
