And somehow both our friends realised that their troubles were by no means over.
Chapter Twenty Four.
Were They Prisoners?
The first elation of their most timely rescue cooled, Haviland and Oakley realised that they had no very bright outlook before them, under the changed condition of things. Instead of their return to civilisation and the outside world after their long exile—a return, too, bearing with them the results of a highly successful enterprise, and which every day had been bringing nearer and nearer—here they were virtually captives once more, in process of being marched back further and further from the goal to which they had looked; back, indeed, into unknown wilds, and at the mercy of a barbarian despot whose raids and massacres had set up a reputation for cruelty which surpassed that of Mushâd himself.
The conditions of the march, too, were exhausting even to themselves. Twenty-five, even thirty miles a day, were as nothing to these sinewy savages. They did not, however, take a straight line, but diverged considerably every now and then to fall upon some unhappy village. Contrary, however, to custom, they perpetrated no massacres on these occasions. What they did do was to show off Mushâd and his principal followers, with slave-yokes on their necks, and under every possible circumstance of ignominy, in order that all might see that the terrible and redoubted slaver chief was a mere dog beside the power of the Great King. This revolted the two Englishmen, and however little reason they had to commiserate their late enemies, at any rate these were brave men, and they had expected that a brave race like the Inswani would have recognised this. At last they said as much.
It happened that Dumaliso had compelled several of the meanest of the villagers to lash Mushâd. The infliction was not severe. It was merely the indignity that was aimed at. The haughty Arab, however, might have been made of wood for all the sign he gave of either pain or humiliation. But the two white men were thoroughly disgusted, and it is absolutely certain that, had the means been at hand, they would, at all risks, have aided their late enemy to escape.
“Why degrade a brave man thus, leader of the Great Great One’s impi?” Haviland had expostulated. “If he is to die, even in torment, it may be that he has deserved that. But to degrade him at the hands of these vile dogs, who just now trembled at the mere sound of his name—is that well?”
“Is it well?” echoed Dumaliso, with a brutal laugh. “See there, white man,” pointing with his great assegai at Mushâd. “If yonder dog had fifty lives, every one of them should be taken from him in the torment of many days. For him nothing is too bad. It is the word of the Great Great One.”