Night after night, for nearly four years, Renshaw, the man of delicate fibre and refined training, the son of Western civilization, lived through such scenes as these, amid incidental horrors of bestiality that cannot be set down. When the uproar in the prison attained exceptional violence, the guards threw back the doors, and lashed with their hide-whips at the heads and faces of the nearest prisoners, and every time that this occurred some of them, struggling to move back, fell to the ground, and were trampled under foot.
Renshaw was the only white prisoner among the Soudanese and Egyptians who thus endured the tender mercies of the Prophet—the Prophet for whom, it was said, the Angels had fought and would fight again, until every follower of the Cross accepted the Koran of Mahommed. For, like many of the greatest crimes that stain the annals of mankind, this prison discipline, in theory, was designed to benefit the souls of the captives. The White Kaffir, as an unbeliever, a dog and an outcast, was a special object of the Mahdi's solicitation. Only let him believe and his fetters should be struck off, or, at least, some of them. He had but to cry aloud in fervent faith, "There is but one God, and Mahommed is his Prophet!"
But it was a cry that never passed the lips of Wilson Renshaw. The lash was tried again and again. Fifteen to twenty lashes at first; then a hundred; then a hundred and fifty. But still the bleeding lips in which the white man's teeth were biting in his anguish would not blaspheme. "Will you not cry out?" the gaoler asked. "Dog of a Christian, are thy head and heart of stone?" No answer; and again and yet again the lash descended.
If only death would come, kind death to end this pain of mutilated flesh; this still sharper pain of degradation and humiliation! But death came not. Courage, indomitable pride of race, a godlike quality of patience, armed the White Kaffir to endure the slings and arrows of his dreadful fate. Death he would welcome with a sigh of gladness, but these barbarians should never, never break his spirit.
At last the rigour of his sufferings was abated. Out of the mists of what seemed an interminable period of delirium, he awoke to a change of his treatment that caused him much surprise. No longer was he to be half starved. At night he was allowed to sleep alone in a rough, dark hut in a corner of the prison compound. Each day he was permitted, though still fettered, to go down to the river, on the banks of which the prison was placed, and wash in the waters of the Nile. From all of these changes it became apparent that his life, and not his death, was now desired. The motive for the change he had yet to realize. A whisper here and there, a chance word from his gaolers, with sundry indications, fugitive and various, at length convinced him that this amelioration of his fate could have but one sinister explanation, and one inspiring motive. If not the Mahdi himself, then some of the more covetous of his leading followers must be drawing payment from some mysterious source, a subsidy for holding him secure, here under the burning African sun, remote and cut off from all chance of rescue or escape.
Yet escapes were planned, for even among these barbarous people there were a few who felt compassion for the hapless condition of the White Kaffir; and when it began to be rumoured that he was a man of high consideration in his native country, others, moved by cupidity and the prospect of a great reward, found means of letting Renshaw know that, on conditions, they were willing to secure him at least a chance of freedom. But every plan fell through. The Mahdi's spies were everywhere, and those who fell under suspicion of seeking to aid Renshaw to break free from his captivity received a punishment so terrible that he shrank from listening to any further offer of assistance.
Presently his condition underwent yet further betterment. He became a prisoner at large—though still fettered and still closely watched. Employment he had none, save the performance of a few menial offices. Books he had none, save Al-Koran, the volume containing the religious, social, commercial, military, and legal code of Islam. But here, in the heart of this dreadful land, among the dark people of the Dark Continent, he now learned to look upon the book of life itself from a new and startling standpoint. Before him was unfolded a new and terrible chapter of history in the making, a chapter which revealed the slow marshalling of millions of the dark-skinned races, eager to wrest dominion and supremacy from the white-skinned masters of the world.