"You are not well," replied the sheik; "and if I buy you, you cannot walk."
"Let me ride on a camel until I get out of sight of these my masters,"
answered Jim; "you will then see whether I can walk or not. They will sell me cheap: for they think I am done up. But I am not; I was only weary of diving after worthless stones."
The old sheik promised to follow Jim"s advice; and ordered his companions to prepare immediately for the continuance of their journey.
Sidi Hamet was called, and asked by Rias Abdallah if he would sell some of the stones they had saved from the infidel ship.
"Bismillah! No!" exclaimed the wrecker. "You say they are of no value, and I do not wish to cheat any true belief of the Prophet."
"Will you give me some of them, then?"
"No! Allah forbid that Sidi Hamet should ever make a worthless present to a friend!"
"I am a merchant," rejoined the old sheik, "and wish to do business.
Have you any slaves, or other property, you can sell me?"
"Yes! You see that Christian dog," replied the wrecker, pointing to Sailor Bill"s brother; "I will sell him."
"You have promised to take me to Swearah," interrupted Jim. "Do not sell me, master; I think I shall get well some time, and will then work for you as hard as I can."
Sidi Hamet cast upon his infidel slave a look of of contempt at this allusion to his illness; but Jim"s remark, and the angry glance, were both unheeded by the Arab sheik.
The slave"s pretended wishes not to be sold were disregarded; and for the consideration of an old shirt and a small camel-hair tent, he became the property of Rias Abdallah Yezzed.
The old sheik and his followers then betook themselves to their camels; and the kafila was hurried up the dry bed of the river, leaving the wreckers to continue their toilsome and unprofitable task.
CHAPTER SIXTY FIVE.
SAILOR BILL"S BROTHER.
After leaving the coast, the travellers kept at a quick pace, and Sailor Bill and his brother had but little opportunity of holding converse together. When the _douar_ had been pitched for the night, the old salt and the "young gentlemen", his companions, gathered around the man whose experience in the miseries of Saaran slavery so far exceeded their own.
"Now, Jim," began the old man-o"-war"s-man, "you must spin us the yarn of all your cruising since you"ve been here. We"ve seen somethin" o"
the elephant since we"ve been cast ash.o.r.e, and that"s not long. I don"t wonder at you sayin" you "ave been aboard this craft forty-three years."
"Yes, that is the correct time according to my reckoning," interrupted Jim; "but, Bill, you don"t look much older than when I saw you last.
How long ago was it?"
"About eleven years."
"Eleven years! I tell you that I"ve been here over forty."
""Ow can that be?" asked Bill. "Dang it, man, you"ll not be forty years old till the fourteenth o" next month. You "ave lost yer senses, an" in troth, it ain"t no wonder!"
"That is true, for there is nothing in the Saara to help a man keep his reckoning. There are no seasons; and every day is as like another as two seconds in the same minute. But surely I must have been here for more than eleven years?"
"No," answered Bill, "ye "ave no been here only a wee bit langer than tin; but afther all ye must "ave suffered in that time it is quare that ye should a know"d me at all, at all."
"I did not know you until you spoke," rejoined Jim. "Then I couldn"t doubt that it was you who stood before me, when I heard our father"s broad Scotch, our mother"s Irish brogue, and the talk of the c.o.c.kneys amongst whom your earliest days were pa.s.sed, all mingled together."
"You see, Master Colly," said Bill, turning to the young Scotchman, "my brother Jim has had the advantage of being twelve years younger than I; and when he was old enough to go to school, I was doing something to help kape him there, and for all that I believe he is plased to see me."
"Pleased to see you!" exclaimed Jim. "Of course I am."
"I"m sure av it," said Bill. "Well, then, brother, go ahead, an" spin us your yarn."
"I have no one yarn to spin," replied Jim, "for a narrative of my adventures in the desert would consist of a thousand yarns, each giving a description of some severe suffering or disappointment. I can only tell you that it seems to me that I have pa.s.sed many years in travelling through the sands of the Saara, years in cultivating barley on its borders, years in digging wells, and years in attending flocks of goats, sheep, and other animals. I have had many masters, all bad, and some worse, and I have had many cruel disappointments about regaining my liberty. I was once within a single day"s journey of Mogador; and was then sold again and carried back into the very heart of the desert. I have attempted two or three times to escape; but was recaptured each time, and nearly killed for the unpardonable dishonesty of trying to rob my master of my own person. I have often been tempted to commit suicide; but a sort of womanly curiosity and stubbornness has prevented me. I wished to see how long Fortune would persecute me; and I was determined not to thwart her plans by putting myself beyond their reach.
I did not like to give in: for anyone who tries to escape from trouble by killing himself shows that he has come off sadly worsted in the war of life."
"You are quite right," said Harry Blount; "but I hope that your hardest battles in that war are now over. Our masters have promised to carry us to some place where we may be ransomed by our countrymen, and you of course will be taken along with us."
"Do not flatter yourselves with that hope," said Jim. "I was amused with it for several years. Every master I have had gave me the same promise, and here I am yet. I did think when my late owners were saving the stone from the wreck, that I could get them to enter the walls of some seaport town, and that possibly they might take me along with them.
But that hope has proved as delusive as all others I have entertained since shipwrecked on the sh.o.r.e of this accursed country. I believe there are a few who are fortunate enough to regain their liberty; but the majority of sailors cast away on the Saaran coast never have the good fortune to get away from it. They die under the hardships and ill-treatment to which they are exposed upon the desert, without leaving a trace of their existence any more than the dogs or camels belonging to their common masters.
"You have asked me to give an account of my life since I have been shipwrecked. I cannot do that; but I shall give you an easy rule by which you may know all about it. We will suppose you have all been three months in the Saara, and Bill here says that I have been here ten years; therefore I have experienced about forty times as long a period of slavery as one of yourselves. Now, multiply the sum total of your sufferings by forty, and you will have some idea of what I have undergone.
"You have probably witnessed some scenes of heartless cruelty--scenes that shocked and wounded the most sensitive feelings of your nature. I have witnessed forty times as many. While suffering the agonies of thirst and hunger, you may have prayed for death as a relief to your anguish. Where such have been your circ.u.mstances once, they have been mine for forty times.
"You may have had some bright hopes of escaping, and once more revisiting your native land; and then have experienced the bitterness of disappointment. In this way I have suffered forty times as much as any one of you."
Sailor Bill and the young gentlemen who had been for several days under the pleasant hallucination that they were on the high road to freedom, were again awakened to a true sense of their situation by the words of a man far more experienced than they in the deceitful ways of the desert.
Before separating for the night, the three mids learnt from Bill and his brother that the latter had been first officer of the ship that had brought him to the coast. They could perceive by his conversation that he was an intelligent man, one whose natural abilities and artificial acquirements were far superior to those of their shipmate, the old man-of-war"s-man.
"If such an accomplished individual," reasoned they, "has been for ten years a slave in the Saara, unable to escape or reach any place where his liberty might be restored, what hope is there for us?"
CHAPTER SIXTY SIX.
A LIVING STREAM.
Every hour of the journey presented some additional evidence that the kafila was leaving the Great Desert behind, and drawing near a land that might be considered fertile.
On the day after parting from the wreckers, a walled town was reached; and near it, on the sides of some of the hills, were seen growing a few patches of barley.
At this place the caravan rested for the remainder of the day. The camels and horses were furnished with a good supply of food and water drawn from deep wells. It was the best our adventurers had drunk since being cast away on the African coast.
Next morning the journey was continued.
After they had been on the road about two hours, the old sheik and a companion, riding in advance of the others, stopped before what seemed in the distance a broad stream of water.
All hastened forward, and the boy slaves beheld a sight that filled them with much surprise and considerable alarm. It was a stream, a stream of living creatures moving over the plain.
It was a migration of insects, the famed locusts of Africa.