Had the black sheik been acquainted with the English language, as spoken in Ratcliff Highway, he would have better understood Sailor Bill’s reply to his rude matutinal salutation; which, along with several not very complimentary wishes, ended by devoting the “nayger’s” eyes to eternal perdition.
* * *
* * *
Chapter Thirty Eight.
An obstinate Dromedary.
The morning meal was eaten as soon as prepared. Its scantiness surprised our adventurers. Even the more distinguished individuals of the horde partook of only a very small quantity of milk, or sangleh. The two sheiks alone got anything like what might have been deemed an ordinary breakfast; while the more common class, as the half-breeds, hassanes; and the negro slaves had to content themselves with less than a pint of sour milk to each, half of which was water, the mixture denominated cheni.
Could this meal be meant for breakfast? Harry Blount and Terence thought not. But Colin corrected them, by alleging that it was. He had read of the wonderful abstemiousness of these children of the desert; how they can live on a single meal a day, and this scarce sufficient to sustain life in a child of six years old; that is, an English child. Often will they go for several successive days without eating; and when they do eat regularly, a drink of milk is all they require to satisfy hunger.
Colin was right. It was their ordinary breakfast. He might have added, their dinner too; for they would not likely obtain another morsel of food before sundown.
But where was the breakfast of Colin and his fellow-captives? This was the question that interested them far more than the dietary of the Bedouins. They were all hungering like hyenas, and yet no one seemed to think of them, no one offered them either bite or sup. Filthy as was the mess made by the Arab women, and filthily as they prepared it, boiling it in pots, and serving it up in wooden dishes, that did not appear to have had a washing for weeks, the sight of it increased the hungry cravings of the captives; and they would fain have been permitted to share the scanty déjeuner.
They made signs of their desire; piteous appeals for food, by looks and gestures, but all in vain; not a morsel was bestowed on them. Their brutal captors only laughed at them, as though they intended that all four should go without eating.
It soon became clear that they were not to starve in idleness. As soon as they had been started to their feet each of them was set to a task; one to collect camel’s dung for the cooking-fires; another to fetch water from the brackish muddy pool which had caused the oasis to become a place of encampment; while the third was called upon to assist in the loading of the tent equipage, along with the salvage of the wreck, an operation entered upon as soon as the sangleh had been swallowed.
Sailor Bill, in a different part of the douar, was kept equally upon the alert; and if he, or any of the other three, showed signs of disliking their respective tasks, one of the two sheiks made little ado about striking them with a leathern strap, a knotty stick, or any weapon that chanced to come readiest to hand. They soon discovered that they were under the government of taskmasters not to be trifled with, and that resistance or remonstrance would be alike futile. In short, they saw that they were slaves!
While packing the tents, and otherwise preparing for the march, they were witnesses to many customs, curious as new to them. The odd equipages of the animals, both those of burden and those intended to be ridden; the oval panniers, placed upon the backs of the camels, to carry the women and the younger children; the square pads upon the humps of the maherries; the tawny little piccaninnies strapped upon the backs of their mothers; the kneeling of the camels to receive their loads, as if consenting to what could not be otherwise than disagreeable to them, were all sights that might have greatly interested our adventurers, had they been viewing them under different circumstances.
Out of the last mentioned of these sights, an incident arose, illustrating the craft of their captors in the management of their domestic animals.
A refractory camel, that, according to usual habit, had voluntarily humiliated itself to receive its load, after this had been packed upon it, refused to rise to its feet. The beast either deemed the burden inequable and unjust (for the Arabian camel, like the Peruvian llama, has a very acute perception of fair play in this respect) or a fit of caprice had entered its mulish head. For one reason or another it exhibited a stern determination not to oblige its owner by rising to its feet; but continued its genuflexion in spite of every effort to get it on all-fours.
Coaxing and cajolery were tried to no purpose. Kicking by sandalled feet, scourging with whips, and beating with cudgels produced no better effect; and to all appearance the obstinate brute had made up its mind to remain in the oasis, and let the tribe depart without it.
At this crisis an ingenious method of making the camel change its mind suggested itself to its master; or perhaps he had practised it on some former occasion. Maddened by the obstinacy of the animal, he seized hold of an old burnouse, and rushing up, threw it over its head. Then drawing the rag tightly around its snout, he fastened it in such a manner as completely to stop up the nostrils.
The camel, finding its breathing thus suddenly interrupted, became terrified; and without further loss of time, scrambled to its feet; to the great amusement of the women and children who were spectators of the scene.
* * *
* * *
Chapter Thirty Nine.
Watering the Camels.
In an incredibly short space of time the tents were down, and the douar with all its belongings was no longer to be seen; or only in the shape of sundry packages balanced upon the backs of the animals.
The last operation before striking out upon the desert track, was the watering of these: the supply for the journey having been already dipped up out of the pool, and poured into goat’s-skin sacks.
The watering of the camels appeared to be regarded as the most important matter of all. In this performance every precaution was taken, and every attention bestowed, to ensure to the animals a full supply of the precious fluid, perhaps from a presentiment on the part of their owners that they themselves might some day stand in need of, and make use of, the same water!
Whether this was the motive or not, every camel belonging to the horde was compelled to drink till its capacious stomach was quite full; and the quantity consumed by each would be incredible to any other than the owner of an African dromedary. Only a very large cask could have contained it.
At the watering of the animals our adventurers had an opportunity of observing another incident of the Saara, quite as curious and original as that already described.
It chanced that the pool that furnished the precious fluid, and which contained the only fresh water to be found within fifty miles, was just then on the eve of being dried up. A long season of drought, that is to say, three or four years, had reigned over this particular portion of the desert; and the lagoon, formerly somewhat extensive, had shrunk into the dimensions of a trifling tank, containing little more than two or three hundred gallons. This during the stay of the two tribes united as wreckers had been daily diminishing; and had the occupants of the douar not struck tents at the time they did, in another day or so they would have been in danger of suffering from thirst. This was in reality the cause of their projected migration. But for the fear of getting short in the necessary commodity of fresh water, they would have hugged the seashore a little longer—in hopes of picking up a few more “waifs” from the wreck of the English ship.
At the hour of their departure from the encampment, the pool was on the eve of exhaustion. Only a few score gallons of not very pure water remained in it, about enough to fill the capacious stomachs of the camels; whose owners had gauged them too often to be ignorant of the quantity.
It would not do to play with this closely calculated supply. Every pint was precious; and to prove that it was so esteemed, the animals were constrained to swallow it in a fashion which certainly nature could never have intended.
Instead of taking it in by the mouth, the camels of these Saaran rovers were compelled to quench their thirst through the nostrils!
You will wonder in what manner this could be effected, inquiring whether the quadrupeds voluntarily performed this nasal imbibing?
Our adventurers, witnesses of the fact, wondered also—while struck with its quaint peculiarity.
There is a proverb that “one man may take a horse to the water, but twenty cannot compel him to drink.” Though this proverb may hold good of an English horse, it has no significance when applied to an African dromedary. Proof: our adventurers saw the owner of each camel bring his animal to the edge of the pool; but instead of permitting the thirsty creature to step in and drink for itself, its head was held aloft; a wooden funnel was filled, the narrow end inserted into the nostril, and by the respiratory canal the water introduced to the throat and stomach.
You may ask, why this selection of the nostrils, instead of the mouth? Our adventurers so interrogated one another. It was only after becoming better acquainted with the customs of the Saara, that they acquired a satisfactory explanation of one they had frequent occasion to observe.
Though ordinarily of the most docile disposition, and in most of its movements the most tranquil of creatures, the dromedary, when drinking from a vessel, has the habit of repeatedly shaking its head, and spilling large quantities of the water placed before it. Where water is scarce, and, as in the Saara, considered the most momentous matter of life, a waste of it after such fashion could not be tolerated. To prevent it, therefore, the camel-owner has contrived that this animal, so essential to his own safe existence, should drink through the orifices intended by nature for its respiration.
* * *
* * *
Chapter Forty.
A Squabble between the Sheiks.
The process of watering the camels was carried on with the utmost diligence and care. It was too important to be trifled with, or negligently performed. While filling the capacious stomachs of the quadrupeds, their owners were but laying in a stock for themselves.
As Sailor Bill jocularly remarked, “it was like filling the water-casks of a man-of-war previous to weighing anchor for a voyage.” In truth, very similar was the purpose for which these ships of the desert were being supplied; for, when filling the capacious stomachs of the quadrupeds, their owners were not without the reflection that the supply might yet pass into their own. Such a contingency was not improbable, neither would it be new.
For this reason the operation was conducted with diligence and care, no camel being led away from the pool until it was supposed to have had a “surfeit”, and this point was settled by seeing the water poured in at its nostrils running out at its mouth.
As each in turn got filled, it was taken back to the tribe to which it belonged; for the united hordes had by this time become separated into two distinct parties, preparatory to starting off on their respective routes.
Our adventurers could now perceive a marked difference between the two bands of Saara wanderers into whose hands they had unfortunately fallen. As already stated, the black sheik was an African of the true negro type, with thick lips, flattened nostrils, woolly hair, and heels projecting several inches to the rear of his ankle-joints. Most of his following were similarly “furnished”, though not all of them. There were a few of mixed colour, with straight hair, and features almost Caucasian, who submitted to his rule, or rather to his ownership, since these last all appeared to be his slaves.
Those who trooped after the old Arab were mostly of his own race, mixed with a remnant of mongrel Portuguese, descendants of the Peninsular colonists who had fled from the coast settlements after the conquest of Morocco by the victorious “Sheriffs.”
Of such mixed races are the tribes who thinly people the Saara—Arabs, Berbers, Ethiopians of every hue; all equally Bedouins, wanderers of the pathless deserts. It did not escape the observation of our adventurers that the slaves of the Arab sheik and his followers were mostly pure negroes from the south; while those of the black chieftain, as proclaimed by the colour of their skin, showed a Shemitic or Japhetic origin. The philosophic Colin could perceive in this a silent evidence of the retribution of races.
The supply of water being at length laid in, not only in the skins appropriated to the purpose, but also within the stomachs of the camels, the two tribes seem prepared to exchange with each other the parting salute, to speak the “Peace be with you!” And yet there was something that caused them to linger in each other’s proximity. Their new-made captives could tell this, though ignorant of what it might be.
It was something that had yet to be settled between the two sheiks who did not appear at this moment of leave-taking to entertain for each other any very cordial sentiment of friendship.
Could their thoughts have found expression in English words, they would have taken shape somewhat as follows:—
“That lubberly nigger,” (we are pursuing the train of reflections that passed through the mind of the Arab sheik)—“old Nick burn him!—thinks I’ve got more than my share of this lucky windfall. He wants these boys bad, I know that. The Sultan of Timbuctoo has given him a commission to procure white slaves, that’s clear; and boy slaves, if he can, that’s equally certain. This lot would suit him to a T. I can tell that he don’t care much for the old salt he has tricked me out of by his superior skill at that silly game of helga. No; his Majesty of the mud-walled city don’t want such as him. It’s boys he’s after, as can wait smartly at his royal table, and give éclat to his ceremonial entertainments. Well, he can have these three at a price.
“Ay; but a big price,” continued the cunning old trafficker in human flesh, after a short reflection, “a whopping big price. The togs we’ve stripped from them were no common clothing. Good broadcloth in their jackets, and bullion bands on their caps. They must be the sons of great sheiks. At Wedinoin the old Jew will redeem them. So, too, the merchants at Susa; or maybe I had best take them on to Mogador, where the consul of their country will come down handsomely for such as they. Yes; that’s the trick!”
At this parting scene the thoughts of Fatima’s husband were equally occupied with trading speculations, in which he was assisted by the amiable Fatima herself.
Translated also into English, they would have read as follows:—
“The Sultan would give threescore of his best blacks for those three tripe-coloured brats.”
