The Heart of the Wild: Nature Studies from Near and Far

by S. L. Bensusan

Left in charge of the keeper of the fandak, the children lay at their ease in the reeking straw, and gave their three days to eating and drinking and singing odds and ends of songs they had heard at home. No sound of the city reached them, save at the hours of prayer, when from every minaret the faithful were called to acknowledge the Unity of Allah. On the afternoon of the third day they were taken to the baths by a strange man, and each child was arrayed in clean white linen garments, supplemented in the case of the girls by kerchiefs of many colours.

“Follow me, O slaves,” said the Moor, when they were all ready to return. He led them unresisting through the heart of the city, through the bazaars with their roofs of palm branches and box-like shops, past the arcades of the workers in brass and linen and leather and sweatmeats, to a corner where the passage ended in a heavily barred gate.

The gatekeeper drew the bolts, and showed through the open door a bare circular market-place with a broken and dilapidated arcade stretching down the centre of it, and booths all round the walls. Marzuk cast one desperate look round, as a bird at the door of a cage, but the fear of Hadj Abdullah was upon him. In another moment they had been shepherded through the gate-way and commanded to stand still while their guardian went to a Moorish official, who sat cross-legged on a carpet, and gave the numbers and description of the party.

“Five boys, three girls, Timbuctoo,” repeated the official, and wrote the details laboriously on a slip of paper with a bamboo pen.

“Follow,” commanded the Moor, and the children marched obediently to one of the huts or booths built out from the wall like covered pens.

“Go within, and stay there until the market is opened. Let none stir beyond the entrance,” he said curtly, and seeing them safely housed, went off.

Marzuk left his companions whose terror annoyed him, and going to the mouth of the pen looked out at the scene.

He saw at once that he and his little party were not alone in the slave-market. Nearly a dozen of the other pens were tenanted for the most part by adults, who could be heard chattering or singing happily enough, and in one pen, at least, quarelling violently. Certainly, they were in no way cast down, and their indifference helped to bring further confidence to Marzuk, who beckoned the most distressed of the party—a little nine-year-old girl—to come to his side and look out.

It was the eve of a great sale. The “Court Elevated by Allah” was about to leave the southern capital for the North; the great Wazeers would be seeking to make the last changes in, or additions to, their harems and households before leaving home. On this account Hadj Abdullah had not kept the slaves longer to fatten them, preferring to take the prices that would rule at a big sale for inferior goods, than what he would get for better material when the city was half empty.

The sun was beginning to decline, and a faint freshness was coming into the sultry air. The last batch of slaves had been entered; a group of auctioneers surrounded the Government official in charge of the market, and speculated hopefully upon the prices that would rule. The keeper of the gate flung it back, and Marzuk saw the arrival of the earliest buyers.