“Have I to go through that?” thought Flaggan; “well, well, niver say die, owld boy, it’s wan comfort that I’m biggish, an’ uncommon tough.”
It would be tedious to prolong the description of the Irishman’s bathe that morning. Suffice it to say that, after he had lain on the ottoman long enough to feel as if the greater part of him had melted away, he awoke his attendant, who led him into a corner, laid him on the sloppy floor, and subjected him to a series of surprises. He first laid Ted’s head on his naked thigh, and rubbed his face and neck tenderly, as though he had been an only son; he then straightened his limbs and baked them as though he had been trained to knead men into loaves from infancy; after that he turned him on his back and on his face; punched and pinched and twisted him; he drenched him with hot water, and soused him with soap-suds from head to foot, face and all, until the stout mariner resembled a huge mass of his native sea-foam; he stuck his hair up on end, and scratched his head with his ten nails; and tweaked his nose, and pulled his fingers and toes till they cracked again!
All this Ted Flaggan, being tough, bore with passing fortitude, frequently saying to the Moor, internally, for soap forbade the opening of his lips—
“Go ahead, me lad, an’ do yer worst!”
But although his tormentor utterly failed to move him by fair means, he knew of a foul method which proved successful. He crossed Ted’s arms over his breast, and attempted to draw them as far over as possible, with the view, apparently, of tying them into a knot.
“Pull away, me hearty!” thought Flaggan, purposely making himself as limp as possible.
The Moor did pull; and while his victim’s arms were stretched across each other to the uttermost, he suddenly fell upon them, thereby almost forcing the shoulder-joints out of their sockets.
“Och! ye spalpeen!” shouted Ted, flinging him off as if he had been a feather. Then, sinking back, he added, “Come on; you’ll not ketch me slaipin’ again, me honey!”
The amused Moor accepted the invitation, and returned to the charge. He punched him, baked him, boxed him, and battered him, and finally, drenching him with ice-cold water, swathed him in a sheet, twisted a white turban on his head, and turned him out like a piece of brand-new furniture, highly polished, into the drying-room.
“How yoos like it?” asked Rais Ali, as they lay in the Turkish-corpse stage of the process, calmly sipping tea.