[CHAPTER X.]
CAPTIVITY IN LUDAMAR.
The treatment which Park now experienced in the camp of Ali was brutal and barbarous beyond description.
In the eyes of the degenerate Arabs of Ludamar he was an object detestable both to God and man—a Christian and a spy. Everything, therefore, that savage ingenuity could invent to insult and torture him was heaped upon him with fiendish glee and eagerness.
On the morning after his arrival he was confined in a small square flat-roofed hut built of corn stalks, which happily admitted the breeze and excluded the sun. The hog was tied to the hut as a suitable companion to the hated Christian.
From morning till night the unhappy prisoner had to place himself on exhibition, and incessantly demonstrate the whiteness of his skin, the number of his toes, and the method of adjusting his dress—for all which torment he was repaid with curses. In common with the hog, he was made the sport of men, women, and children alike. Not even at night was he left to himself, being continually disturbed by his guards bent on satisfying themselves that he was safe in the hut, or by thieves seeking what they could carry away. To these tortures of mind and body was added the uncertainty of what might be before him. A council of elders had considered his case, and he was variously told that death, the loss of the right hand, or the putting out of his eyes, was the fate reserved for him.
To add to the miseries of his condition, he had to suffer the hardships attendant on the observance of Rhamadan, the month of fasting, during which the faithful are not permitted to eat or drink between sunrise and sunset. This fast from meat and drink, bad enough at any time in a scorching climate, was rendered doubly painful to the unhappy traveller by the extreme scantiness of the supply doled out to him once in the twenty-four hours at midnight. Then, too, it was the hottest time of the year, and so scorching at times were the winds from the desert, that it was impossible to hold the hand in a draught without pain. Sandstorms, too, now and again filled the air to the point of suffocation, while the heavens overhead were as brass, and the sands under foot as the floor of an oven.
Under these distressing conditions Park’s only rôle was to comply with every command, and patiently endure every insult, compatible with appearing as useless as possible to the tyrants, so that they might not be tempted to detain him for the value of his services.
Day after day thus passed, each one more miserable than the preceding, but Park’s iron frame and indomitable spirit stood it all. Where his savage gaolers failed, however, the fears and doubts for his future progress and the ultimate success of his mission threatened to succeed. The excessive heat and scarcity of water in the wilderness made escape in the hot season out of the question, while the hardships and dangers of travel to be faced in the wet season appeared scarcely less appalling.