His opportunity came some little time later on, when the same gaoler invented another excuse for flogging me. I had bought from one of the gaolers a small mud hut, a few feet square, in the prison enclosure, and received permission from Idris es Saier to sleep in this at night instead of in the Umm Hagar. This young gaoler—and other gaolers as well—accepted baksheesh from prisoners to allow them to sleep in the open; and Idris, finding the contributions to his “starving children” falling off, suspected the reason, and lay in wait. Upon a night when a larger number than usual had been allowed to sleep outside the Umm Hagar, he suddenly made his appearance in the prison enclosure. There was nothing for our guardians to do but to pretend that the prisoners had been insubordinate, had refused to enter the Umm Hagar, and to lay about them with their whips. The young gaoler, not aware that I had paid the regulation baksheesh to Idris, made straight for my hut, dragged me out, and flogged me to the door of the common cell, a distance, maybe, of forty or fifty yards, but my thick jibbeh prevented the blows from telling with much effect as far as regards abrasion of the skin; nevertheless, their weight told on my diminished strength, and I again fell ill. The circumstance came to the ears of the Khaleefa through Idris, or the Nebbi Khiddr, and I had the huge satisfaction of seeing my tormentor dismissed from his lucrative post, |129| subjected to the two hundred lashes he was sentenced to receive, and then sent as a prisoner in chains to work at the very same boats, which he had had me flogged for refusing to assist in unloading. This, at the present moment, is the only bit of real justice I can remember during my twelve years’ captivity.
I have in a former chapter given a slight description of flogging as I saw it practised when first captured by the dervishes; but the flogging in the Saier was a very different matter. The maximum number of stripes ever ordered was a thousand, and this number was often actually given, but in every case the stripes were given over the clothing. The rules of flogging were generally as follows: the first two hundred on the back below the region of the lumbar vertebræ, the third and fourth hundred on the shoulders, and the fifth hundred on the breast. When the maximum number of one thousand lashes was ordered, they were always given on the same parts as those of the first two hundred, and this punishment was resorted to for the purpose of extorting confessions. After eighty or one hundred blows, the jibbeh was cut into shreds, and soon became saturated with the blood of the victim; and while the effect of the individual blows may not have been as great as those from the cat-o’-nine-tails, the number given made up in quantity for what might have been lacking in quality, as is evidenced by the large numbers who died under the castigation or as a result of it later.
On one occasion an old black soldier of the Egyptian |130| Army, named Mohammad Ajjami, who was employed as a runner (a foot-galloper—if I may invent the expression—of the Khaleefa on field days), was sent to me while in the prison to be cured of the effects of a flogging. He had by some means incurred the displeasure of Sheikh ed Din, the son of the Khaleefa, and by him had been sentenced to receive a public flogging, after which he was to be sent to the Saier to be “educated.” He was carried into the prison to me after his flogging. The fleshy part of his back was cut into ribbons, and the hip-bones were exposed. For six or eight weeks I was constantly employed bathing this man’s wounds with a dilute solution of carbolic acid, the carbolic crystals being sent to me by Sheikh ed Din himself for the purpose, for his father, the Khaleefa, jealous of his authority, had censured his son, telling him, as he constantly told others, that “In Usbaiee shareeknee fee mulkee, anna ikktahoo.”* Ajjami recovered, and often came to see me in prison to express his gratitude. Sheikh ed Din himself was so pleased at the man’s recovery that he begged his father to release me, so that I might practise the healing art amongst his Ansar, and teach it to others; but the Khaleefa was obdurate, and refused, his reasons for refusing to release me being better left to be related later by some of my fellow-captives.
* This expression was always used by the Khaleefa in any discussion. Holding up his forefinger, he said (translation of phrase): “Rather than this finger should be a partner in the governing of my realm, I should cut it off.”
My third flogging was received under the following circumstances. Having from Idris es Saier received permission to remain in my mud hovel, instead of |131| spending the nights in the Umm Hagar, and feeling secure in my comparative freedom and safe from the exactions of the other gaolers, as I had baksheeshed Idris well, I firmly refused to be bled any further. My particular guardian, not daring, after what had occurred to my former guardian, to order me into the Umm Hagar, went a step further, and refused to allow me to leave my mud hut at all for any purpose whatever. I insisted upon being allowed to go to the place of ablution—about one hundred yards distant—and being refused, set off, receiving at every step a blow from the courbag. Being heavily chained, I was helpless, and could not reach my tormentor, as he could skip away from my reach, which was limited to the length of the bars connecting my feet, which bars were fifteen inches in length. It was on this occasion, night-time too, that Idris es Saier paid another surprise visit to the prison enclosure to see what number of “unauthorized” prisoners were sleeping outside the Umm Hagar, and, furious at the number he discovered, he ordered all outside, without exception, to be flogged.
I and fifteen to twenty others received a hundred and fifty lashes each—at least, I received this number; others repented by crying out after twenty or thirty blows. I alternately clenched my teeth and bit my lips to prevent a sound of pain escaping, often as I was asked, “Will you not cry out? Is your head and heart still like black iron?” and the more they reminded me of the courage I was exhibiting, the more reason I had for not giving way or breaking down. But the mental ordeal was far, far more terrible than |132| the corporal punishment. There was I, a European, a Prussian, a man who had fought with the British troops in what transpired to be the “too late” expedition for the rescue of Gordon, now in the clutches of the tyrant and his myrmidons, whom we had hoped to rescue Gordon from; a white and a Christian—and the only professing Christian—chained and helpless, being flogged by a black, as much a captive and a slave as I was, and yet my superior and master. It is impossible for any one not having undergone a similar experience to appreciate the mental agonies I endured.
I may have been self-willed and strong-headed; I may, if you wish, have acted like a fool in my constant defiance of the Khaleefa and the tenets of the Mahdi; but now, looking back on those terrible times, I feel convinced that had poor Gordon lived, my actions would at least have met with his approbation, for the outward ceremony or observance of adherence to the Mohammedan faith was carried out on me under force, after the escape of Rossignoli. Death, in whatever form it came, would have come as a welcome visitor to me; but while doing all in my power to exasperate my captors to kill me, something—hope, courage, a clinging to life, pride in my race, or personal vanity in defying them to the end—restrained me from taking my own life, though Heaven knows that, if ever man had a good excuse for doing so, I had. But my conduct so impressed the Khaleefa that he told Wad Nejoumi, who asked for my release so that I might accompany him to Dongola to “open up trade,” and told many others later, “Neufeld I will |133| not release, but I will not kill him.” Invariably, in speaking of me to others, as I was still unconverted, the Khaleefa omitted the name “Abdalla” which I had been given, and spoke of me as “Nofal”—the Arabic pronunciation of Neufeld.
CHAPTER XI A SERIOUS DILEMMA
As I write, there lie before me three successive paragraphs culled from a recent edition of a London paper. These paragraphs were intended to be, and doubtless were, amusing to their readers, but they contain inaccuracies. I have ascertained that one misstatement owes its origin to a report drawn up in connection with the guide’s account of the successful escape of Father Rossignoli. The facts connected with that flight, and my reported refusal to escape when the opportunity (?) offered, find their place later in my narrative. For the moment I shall content myself with but one of the paragraphs, and fill in the details which, while not detracting from the humorous element introduced, will show that the episode referred to had somewhat of a pathetic, if not tragic, vein in it. This may have been lost sight of owing to the tale being recorded in an office about two thousand miles away from the scene of action, and the inaccuracies may be accounted for by the fact that the tale was told by one of that large class in the East whose greatest glory it is, when one of them has by constant |135| practice attained a certain standard of inventive faculty and plausibility, to prove to the world that the race of Haroun-el-Rashid’s story-tellers is not yet extinct. There can be little doubt that the guide and Wakih Idris, and maybe others, would be much entertained, if not a little surprised, if told that the whole of their tales had apparently been believed in.
On my servant Hasseena being sent into the Khaleefa’s hareem in May, 1887, she obtained her release, or dismissal, by declaring that she was with child; she was not. In November, 1888, she certainly was, and the fact could not be concealed. Hasseena, having been a slave, could not well be legally married, so that when dismissed from the Khaleefa’s hareem, she was sent as my property to the hareem of Idris es Saier, where she had, in addition to buying and preparing my food, to perform the housework and run messages for the women of Idris’s household.