He would not kill the slave, after saying that he must go on; nor would he have him carried, since the man would then gain his point.
He stood for a minute meditating on what was to be done. Then a hideous smile stole over his features. He had mastered the difficulty.
Taking its halter from the camel, he fastened one end of it to the saddle, and the other around the wrists of the sailor. Poor Old Bill made resistance to being thus bound, but he was like an infant in the powerful grasp of the black sheik.
The son and brother-in-law of Golah stood by with their muskets on full cock, and the first move any of Bill’s companions could have made to assist him, would have been a signal for them to fire.
When the fastenings were completed, the sheik ordered his son to lead the camel forward; and the sailor, suddenly jerked from his attitude of repose, was rudely dragged onward over the sand.
“You are going now!” exclaimed Golah, nearly frantic with delight; “and we are not carrying you, are we? Neither are you riding? Bismillah! I am your master!”
The torture of travelling in this manner was too great to be long endured; and Bill had to take to his feet and walk forward as before. He was conquered; but as a punishment for the trouble he had caused, the sheik kept him towing at the tail of the camel for the remainder of that day’s journey.
Any one of the white slaves would once have thought that he possessed too much spirit to allow himself, or a friend, to be subjected to such treatment as Bill had that day endured.
None of them was deficient in true courage; yet the proud spirit, of which each had once thought himself possessed, was now subdued by a power to which, if it be properly applied, all animate things must yield.
That power was the feeling of hunger; and there is no creature so wild and fierce but will tamely submit to the dominion of the man who commands it. It is a power that must be used with discretion, or the victims to it, urged by desperation, may destroy their keeper. Golah had the wisdom to wield it with effect; for by it, with the assistance of two striplings, he easily controlled those who, under other circumstances, would have claimed the right to be free.