“Silence! Wouldst thou, son of a dog! speak thus insolently unto thy masters?” cried the dark-faced brute who had dealt the cowardly blow. “Go thou to join the Companions of the Left Hand, and may torments ever rack thee in the fire unquenchable! Take that—and that!” and, bending, he raised his hand swiftly, burying his long dagger twice in the prostrate man’s breast.
One agonised groan and the unfortunate Arab rolled over a corpse. The murderer’s companions laughed heartily.
Scenes of relentless butchery such as these were occurring on every hand. Our fierce captors were merciless; their hatred deadly. A word was quickly followed by a cruel, unerring blow that either maimed or proved fatal. A wounded slave is only an encumbrance, therefore, in almost every instance, when an enemy’s knife struck, it entered a vital part. The horrors of that night were sickening, the bloodshed truly awful. Men, women, even children were slaughtered out of the mere fiendish delight felt by the victors in causing agony to their vanquished foe, and passive and appalled I stood in the grip of my enemies, wondering vaguely how soon I too should share the same fate as those whose horrible death I was being compelled to witness.
The sun had already risen an hour when my captors lifted me upon a horse, securing my feet so that I could not dismount, and soon afterwards we moved away, an armed man riding on either side of each prisoner. From the first it occurred to me that only by affecting the religion of Islâm could I escape death, therefore from that moment I spoke only Arabic, declaring myself a native of Mequinez and a True Believer. My accent in speaking Arabic and the whiteness of my skin my captors attributed to my Moorish parentage, and, judging from the manner in which the sinister-faced Sheikh of the slave-raiders inspected me, I was considered a valuable prize.
Leaving the palms, we struck due south through a great clump of batum trees into the barren, inhospitable region of the Admar, the desert that has never been explored by Europeans, and which is still a blank upon the maps. On setting out we travelled quickly, perhaps owing to the great dreariness of the country and the impulse of the camel-drivers and their beasts to get to their homes. Gradually, however, the day grew very hot and uncomfortable, a stifling west wind scattering the sand of the dunes into our faces and totally obscuring the way. Keeping along the valley, wild and desolate, sometimes nearly a mile wide, we had on our left a broad mount, rising first with gradual ascent, but in its upper part forming a steep and lofty wall which the two men guarding me called El Khaddamiyeh. Passing along a small defile and crossing another valley, which my captors called the Tanarh, we once more gained the great open desert of ever-shifting sand.
“Once I crossed this plain alone in face of the sirocco,” observed one of the men guarding me to his companion. “I would not attempt it again for all the Treasure of Askiá.”
The Arab addressed grunted, but made no reply, and there was a long silence.
“What is the treasure of which thou hast spoken?” I asked, interested, after a pause. “I come from the north, and have never heard of it.”
The dark-faced warrior of the Fadê, giving me a quick glance, asked—
“Art thou ignorant of our great forefather Askiá?”