“No more do I,” said Bill. “He might be as comfortable now as we are; and I say a man’s a fool as won’t be ’appy when he can.”
“What you call his folly,” rejoined Colin, “is but a noble pride that makes him superior to any of us. He has a spirit that will not submit to slavery, and we have not.”
“That be truth,” remarked the Krooman; “Golah nebbar be slave.”
Colin was right. By accepting food and drink from his captors, the black sheik might have satisfied the demands of mere animal nature, but only at the sacrifice of all that was noble in his nature. His self-respect, along with the proud unyielding spirit by which everything good and great is accomplished, would have been gone from him for ever.
Sailor Bill and his companions, the boy slaves, had been taught from childhood to yield to circumstances, and still retain some moral feeling; but Golah had not.
The only thing he could yield to adverse fate was his life. At this moment the Krooman, by a gesture, called their attention towards the captive sheik, at the same time giving utterance to a sharp ejaculation.
“Look,” exclaimed he, “Golah no stay longer on de Saara. You him see soon die now, look at him!”
At the same instant Golah had risen to his feet, inviting his Arab master to a conference.
“There is but one God,” said he; “Mahomet is his prophet, and I am his servant. I will never be a slave. Give me one wife, a camel, and my scimitar, and I will go. I have been robbed; but God is great, and it is His will, and my destiny.”
Golah had at length yielded, though not because that he suffered for food and water, not that he feared slavery or death, not that his proud spirit had become weak or given way; but rather that it had grown stronger under the prompting of revenge.