It seemed but a minute later, it was in reality an hour, when he was awakened by the glare of a torch held close to his face. The smell of the pitch-soaked tow clung to him for months afterwards. Dazed at first, he soon made out the swarthy features of the Portuguese behind the torch, and met his keen eyes peering closely at his own. The Portuguese clicked his tongue, and uttered an exclamation of gleeful and vindictive satisfaction. Turning to the Arab chief, who stood behind, just within the doorway, he cried in Arabic:
"It is the very man!"
Tom lay watching. Now that a crisis was manifestly at hand, his tremors had ceased; his very life depended on his coolness and nerve. De Castro had begun an impassioned speech to the grave Arab. If Tom could have understood it, he would have heard him say:
"You charge me, forsooth, with being a traitor, with betraying you to the English--me, De Castro, the best hater of the English in all Africa! There you have the man who spoilt your game--our game. Man, I call him--that cub yonder, who tricked my boy away from me, and paid him, no doubt, to spy on me!"
("Wonder if he's telling the chief how I punched him!" thought Tom, noting the gleam and gesture of anger in his direction.)
"And you talk of accepting a ransom for him! Bah! 'tis the idea of a white-livered fool! Ransom! Mustapha, you were not always like this. Once upon a time you would have been hot for revenge--your wrath would have been satisfied ere the sun went down. Now you will sit supine after a shameful defeat, and take its price in gold!"
The Arab winced under the sting, and Tom saw him scowl as he laid his hand on his scimitar. He was beginning to speak, but the Portuguese gave him no time.
"Threats! I care not a straw for your threats. Come, Mustapha, do not let us quarrel. Think! Who was it started this parrot-cry, 'Down with the slave-trade'? Who was it stopped the raids for ivory, and hounded your people out of their ancient haunts till they have no rest now for the soles of their feet? Who was it strewed the sands of Egypt with thousands of your kin who were struggling in Allah's name to rescue the country from the Ottoman tyrant? You know who. We have had enough of these accursed English in Africa. But for them the Arabs would have been masters of the continent from Zanzibar to the Atlantic, from Tanganyika to the Great Sea. Bad enough, the swines of Belgians; but they can be bought. You can't buy these insolent dogs of English! Will you be deafened by their barking, and lacerated by their bites? Do you, like a poltroon, throw up the game? If not, let there be no talk of ransom, no faltering; let it be blood for blood, till Africa is our own again."
The Portuguese had waxed more and more vehement, but Tom was cool enough to look on critically as at an oratorical performance, and he even smiled the usual British smile at the fervid, unrestrained eloquence of the Southern races. De Castro went on in calmer accents:
"Come, Mustapha, your men will think you afraid to touch a white man if you allow this bear's whelp to be bought off. They will say: 'Give Mustapha so many gold pieces, and you may draw his teeth!' My friend, hand the cub over to me. I will make an example of him for his countrymen to shiver at!"