Chapter Forty Two.
Golah.
In their journey over the sea of sand, our four adventurers formed part of a company of sixteen men and women, along with six or seven children.
All were the property of one man, the huge and dusky sheik who had won Sailor Bill and the three middies at “desert draughts.”
It soon became known to his white captives that his name was Golah, a name which Terence suggested might be an African abbreviation of the ancient name of Goliah.
Golah was certainly a great man, not in bone and flesh alone, but in intellect as well.
We do not claim for him the gigantic mind that by arranging a few figures and symbols, by the light of a lamp in a garret, could discover a new planet in the solar system, and give its dimensions, weight, and distance from the dome of Saint Paul’s. Neither do we claim that the power of his intellect, if put forth in a storm of eloquence, could move the masses of his fellow-creatures, as a hurricane stirs up the waters of the sea; yet, for all this, Golah had a great intellect. He was born to rule; and not a particle of all the propensities and sentiments constituting his mind was ever intended to yield to the will of another.
The cunning old sheik, who had the first claim to the three mids, had been anxious to retain them; but they were also wanted by Golah, and the Arab was compelled to give them up, after having been fairly beaten at the game; parting with his sable competitor in a mood that was anything but agreeable.
The black sheik had three wives, all of whom possessed the gift of eloquence in a high degree.