Sailor Bill said not a word. He had no voice in the disposal of the
stakes, which were himself and his "toggery", and, knowing this, he
remained silent.
He was not allowed to remain undisturbed. During the progress of the
game, he had become the cynosure of a large circle of eyes, belonging to
the women and children of the united tribes.
He might have looked for some compassion, at least, from the female
portion of those who formed his _entourage_. Half famished with hunger,
a fact which he did not fail to communicate by signs, he might have
expected them to relieve his wants. The circumstance of his making them
known might argue that he did expect some sort of kind treatment.
It was not much, however. His hopes were but slight, and sprang rather
from a knowledge of his own necessities, and of what the women ought to
have done, than what they were likely to do. Old Bill had heard too
much of the character of these hags of the Saara, and their mode of
conducting themselves towards any unfortunate castaway who might be
drifted among them, to expect any great hospitality at their hands.
His hopes, therefore, were moderate; but, for all that, they were doomed
to disappointment.
Perhaps in no other part of the world is the "milk of human kindness" so
completely wanting in the female breast as among the women of the
wandering Arabs of Africa. Slaves to their imperious lords, even when
enjoying the sacred title of wife, they are themselves treated worse
than the animals which they have to manage and tend, even worse at times
than their own bond-slaves, with whom they mingle almost on an equality.
As in all like cases, this harsh usage, instead of producing sympathy
for others who suffer, has the very opposite tendency; as if they found
some alleviation of their cruel lot in imitating the brutality of their
oppressors.
Instead of receiving kindness, the old sailor became the recipient of
insults; not only from their tongues, which he could not understand, but
by acts and gestures which were perfectly comprehensible to him.
While his ears were dinned by virulent speeches which, could he have
comprehended them, would have told him how much he was despised for
being an infidel, and not a follower of the true Prophet; while his eyes
were well-nigh put out by dust thrown in his face, accompanied by
spiteful expectorations, his body was belaboured by sticks, his skin
scratched and pricked with sharp thorns, his whiskers lugged almost to
the dislocation of his jaws, and the hair of his head uprooted in
fistfuls from his pericranium.
All this, too, amid screams and fiendish laughter that resembled an
orgie of furies.
These women--she-devils they better deserved to be called--were simply
following out the teachings of their inhuman faith among religions, even
that of Rome not excepted, the most inhuman that has ever cursed
mankind. Had Old Bill been a believer in their "Prophet," that false
seer of the blood-stained sword, their treatment of him would have been
directly the reverse. Instead of kicks and cuffs, hustlings and
scratchings, he would have been made welcome to a share in such
hospitality as they could have bestowed upon him. It was religion, not
nature, made them act as they did. Their hardness of heart came not
from God, but the Prophet. They were only carrying out the edicts of
their "priests of a bloody faith."
In vain did the old man-o'-war's-man cry out "belay" and "avast". In
vain did he "shiver his timbers", and appeal against their scurvy
treatment by looks, words, and gesture.
These seemed only to augment the mirth and spitefulness of his
tormentors.
In this scene of cruelty there was one woman conspicuous among the rest.
By her companions she was called Fatima. The old sailor, ignorant of
Arabic feminine names, thought it a "misnomer", for of all his
she-persecutors she was the leanest and scraggiest. Notwithstanding the
poetical notions which the readers of Oriental romance might associate
with her name, there was not much poetry about the personage who so
assiduously assaulted Sailor Bill, pulling his whiskers, slapping his
cheeks, and every now and then spitting in his face.
She was something more than middle-aged, short squat, and meagre, with
the eye-teeth projecting on both sides so as to hold up the upper lip
and exhibit all the others in their ivory whiteness, with an expression
resembling that of the hyena. This is considered beauty, a fashion in
full vogue among her country-women who cultivate it with great care,
though to the eyes of the old sailor it rendered the hag all the more
hideous.
But the skinning of the eye-teeth was not the only attempt at ornament
made by this belle of the desert. Strings of black beads hung over her
wrinkled bosom, circlets of white bone were set in her hair, armlets and
bangles adorned her wrists and ankles, and altogether did her costume
and behaviour betoken one distinguished among the crowd of his
persecutors, in short, their sultana or queen.
And such did she prove; for on the black sheik appropriating the old
sailor as a stake fairly won in the game, and rescuing his newly
acquired property from the danger of being damaged, Fatima followed him
to his tent with such demonstrations as showed her to be if not the
"favourite", certainly the head of the harem.