“What does he say?” thundered Ferodia.
“He says he is not a slave, and calls me a liar. They are all asses and sons of asses,” replied Tifum. “Verily, though they own hundreds of black slaves at Zanzibar, they don’t seem to know that the chance of war has made them slaves.”
“Tell him, Tifum, that I say he is a slave, he and his brother; that they shall be my slaves; that they shall do whatever I bid them, and if not, that I will punish them until they do. Ferodia speaks.”
“Do you hear and understand, asses and sons of asses?” asked Tifum of Abdullah and Mussoud. “Do ye hear, children of the Arabs? Ferodia the chief tells you that you shall be his slaves to do his bidding, and if you do not, he will punish you. Listen to the chief’s words, and obey him.”
“We are Arabs,” said Abdullah, proudly tossing, his head back, while his chest seemed to dilate with the great thought. “We are Arabs, and children of the Arabs of Muscat. A chief of the free Bedaween was my father Mohammed, and I am his son Abdullah. The desert wind is not freer than our never-conquered race, and every child of that race is free. We, therefore, cannot be slaves. Ferodia has lied.”
“Tell him, Tifum, that I will beat him until he is bleeding on this floor—until he confesses himself my slave.”
“Ferodia says he will beat you, Abdullah, if that be your name, until you bleed on this floor.”
“Tell him from me he may beat me until I die, but he cannot make me a slave. Has he not slain my father, and has he not dishonoured me by causing me to stand naked before him? Can he punish me more? He is a strong man—you call him a chief; he has in his hand a whip; he says he will use it. I am but a child, but he cannot make me a slave. See, I go to him nearer, and turn my back to him. I will not cry, though he tear my flesh;” and the indomitable young Arab walked up nearer to the chief, looked at him in the eye for a second, then slowly turned his bare back to him, and with bended head and folded arms waited for the blow.
Ferodia, though a chief and a Mtuta warrior, was a true savage; he had never heard of that rare quality which belongs to races civilised and semi-civilised, and is called magnanimity, or a generous forbearance to a conquered foe. He beheld the defenceless boy who was fully in his power standing within reach of the lash he held in his hand,—that delicate youth with the fair and faultless skin, on which an angry blow had never descended, which a whip had never dishonoured,—and the savage could not restrain his instincts of cruelty or the delight to torture and rend which is the instinct of wild men as well as of wild animals. So, when Tifum explained to him what Abdullah had said, and what he meant by thus turning his back to him, Ferodia, as though it were an everyday matter in which no principle was involved, lifted his whip, and as he saw the tender flesh shrink and redden, and then bleed and gape, it but kindled the desire to hurt; but a powerful antidote and corrective,—even subjugator, you may say,—was the resolute passiveness and determined silence of his victim; and without being aware himself of what lessened the power of his blows, and weakened his anger, and finally conquered the desire to torture, his arm was stayed, and still the boy stood up, now confronting him, with the same steady gaze and heroic mien, to ask the astonished savage with a curling lip:
“Well, have you made me a slave now? Am I more a slave than before?”