Chapter Twenty Three.
Of the Sirdar’s Oath.
The unhappy prisoner, forced along by strong and ruthless hands, recognised that he was in the alley way upon which he had looked down from the parapet, what time the shrieks of the tortured man had forced him to stop his ears. Heaven help him! To what death of lingering torment were these barbarians going to put him? There was the very door, and through it he was now dragged.
The horrible greasy fumes which had sickened him before hung about the place, which, entering as he did from the light, seemed to lie in a semi-gloom, suggestive of all sorts of hideous imaginings. At the further end was something that looked like a long iron coffin, raised about eighteen inches from the floor. To this he was forced forward.
Raynier’s blood curdled within him as the full horror of this awful object broke upon him. No coffin was it, but a bath—and the iron rings and chains let into its sides, two at each end, told their own tale. So too, did the ashes of a dead fire underneath. The upper end was padded. The sufferer might not dash out his own brains; might not seek relief from his frightful torment that way.
Faint and sick, his senses in a whirl, he gazed stupidly at the horrid thing. Was his brain giving way? It seemed so. Hardly knowing how he got there he was outside in the air again.
“Our bathroom does not please thee, Feringhi,” said a voice. Looking up, his eyes met the baleful sneering ones of Murad Afzul.
“I have been ill with fever of late. You forget,” he answered, instinctively striving to disguise the despair and terror which the sight of the horrid place had stamped upon his countenance. Then he fainted.