THE KATHAYAN SLAVE.
BY EMILY C. JUDSON.
At the commencement of the English and Burmese war of 1824, all the Christians (called “hat-wearers,” in contradistinction from the turbaned heads of the Orientals) residing at Ava were thrown unceremoniously into the death-prison. Among them were both Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries; some few reputable European traders; and criminals shadowed from the laws of Christendom “under the sole of the golden foot.” These, Americans, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, and Armenian, were all huddled together in one prison, with villains of every grade,—the thief, the assassin, the bandit, or all three in one; constituting, in connection with countless other crimes, a blacker character than the inhabitant of a civilized land can picture. Sometimes stript of their clothing, sometimes nearly starved, loaded with heavy irons, thrust into a hot, filthy, noisome apartment, with criminals for companions and criminals for guards, compelled to see the daily torture, to hear the shriek of anguish from writhing victims, with death, death in some terribly detestable form, always before them, a severer state of suffering can scarcely be imagined.
The Burmese had never been known to spare the lives of their war-captives; and though the little band of foreigners could scarcely be called prisoners of war, yet this well-known custom, together with their having been thrust into the death-prison, from which there was no escape, except by a pardon from the king, cut off nearly every reasonable hope of rescue. But (quite a new thing in the annals of Burmese history), although some died from the intensity of their sufferings, no foreigner was wantonly put to death. Of those who were claimed by the English at the close of the war, some one or two are yet living, with anklets and bracelets which they will carry to the grave with them, wrought in their flesh by the heavy iron. It may well be imagined that these men might unfold to us scenes of horror, incidents daily occurring under their own shuddering gaze, in comparison with which the hair-elevating legends of Ann Radcliff would become simple fairy tales.
The death-prison at Ava was at that time a single large room, built of rough boards, without either window or door, and with but a thinly thatched roof to protect the wretched inmates from the blaze of a tropical sun. It was entered by slipping aside a single board, which constituted a sort of sliding-door. Around the prison, inside the yard, were ranged the huts of the under-jailers, or Children of the Prison, and outside of the yard, close at hand, that of the head-jailer. These jailers must necessarily be condemned criminals, with a ring, the sign of outlawry, traced in the skin of the cheek, and the name of their crime engraved in the same manner upon the breast. The head-jailer was a tall, bony man, with sinews of iron; wearing, when speaking, a malicious smirk, and given at times to a most revolting kind of jocoseness. When silent and quiet, he had a jaded, careworn look; but it was at the torture that he was in his proper element. Then his face lighted up,—became glad, furious, demoniac. His small black eyes glittered like those of a serpent; his thin lips rolled back, displaying his toothless gums in front, with a long, protruding tusk on either side, stained black as ebony; his hollow, ringed cheeks seemed to contract more and more, and his breast heaved with convulsive delight beneath the fearful word Man-Killer. The prisoners called him father, when he was present to enforce this expression of affectionate familiarity; but among themselves he was irreverently christened the Tiger-cat.
One of the most active of the Children of the Prison was a short, broad-faced man, labelled Thief, who, as well as the Tiger, had a peculiar talent in the way of torturing; and so fond was he of the use of the whip, that he often missed his count, and zealously exceeded the number of lashes ordered by the city governor. The wife of this man was a most odious creature, filthy, bold, impudent, cruel, and, like her husband, delighting in torture. Her face was not only deeply pitted with smallpox, but so deformed with leprosy, that the white cartilage of the nose was laid entirely bare; from her large mouth shone rows of irregular teeth, black as ink; her hair, which was left entirely to the care of nature, was matted in large black masses about her head; and her manner, under all this hideous ugliness, was insolent and vicious. They had two children,—little vipers, well loaded with venom; and by their vexatious mode of annoyance, trying the tempers of the prisoners more than was in the power of the mature torturers.