The Boy Slaves

by Mayne Reid

The matrons of the tribes, hags they looked, were preparing the true déjeuner, consisting of sangleh, a sort of gruel, made with millet-meal, boiled over a dull fire of camels’ dung.

The sangleh was to be eaten, by such of them as could afford it, mixed with goats’ or camels’ milk, unstrained and hairy, half curdled into a crab-like acidity, the moment it entered its stinking receptacle.

Here and there men were seen milking their mares or maherries, not a few indulging in the universal beverage by a direct application of their lips to the teats of the animal; while others, appointed to the task, were preparing the paraphernalia of the douar for transportation to some distant oasis.

Watching these various movements were the three mids, still stripped to their shirts, and the old man-o’-war’s-man, clad with like scantiness; since the only garment that clung to his sinewy frame was a pair of cotton drawers, neither very clean nor very sound at the seams.

All four shivered in the chill air of the morning: for hot as is the Saara under its noon-day sun, in the night hours its thermometer frequently falls almost to the point of freezing.

Their state of discomfort did not hinder them from observing what was passing around them. They could have slept on; but the discordant noises of the douar, and a belief that they would not be permitted any longer to enjoy their interrupted slumbers, hindered them from reclosing their eyes. Still recumbent, and occasionally exchanging remarks in a low tone of voice, they noted the customs of their captors.

The young Scotchman had read many books relating to the prairies of America, and their savage denizens. He was forcibly reminded of these by what he now saw in this oasis of the sandy Saara: the women treated like dogs, or worse, doing all the work that might be termed labour, tending the cattle, cooking the meals, pitching or striking the tents, loading the animals, and themselves bearing such portions of the load as exceeded the transport strength of the tribal quadrupeds, aided only by such wretched helots as misfortune had flung in the way of their common masters. The men, mostly idle, ludicrously nonchalant, reclining on their saddle pads, or skins, inhaling the narcotic weed; apparently proud in the possession of that lordship of wretchedness that surrounded them.

Colin was constrained to compare the savage life of two continents, separated by an ocean. He came to the conclusion, that under similar circumstances mankind will ever be the same. In the Comanche of the Llano Estacado, or the Pawnee of the Platte, he would have found an exact counterpart of the Ishmaelitish wanderer over the sandy plains of the Saara.

He was allowed but scant time to philosophise upon these ethnological phenomena. As the douar became stirred into general activity, he, along with his two companions, was rudely startled from his attitude of observation, and ordered to take a share in the toils of the captors.

At an earlier hour, and still more rudely, had Sailor Bill received the commands of his master; who, as the first rays of the Aurora began to dapple the horizon, had ordered the old man-o’-war’s-man to his feet, at the same time administering to him a cruel kick, that came very near shivering some of his stern timbers.