After leaving the coast, the travellers kept at a quick pace, and Sailor
Bill and his brother had but little opportunity of holding converse
together. When the _douar_ had been pitched for the night, the old salt
and the "young gentlemen", his companions, gathered around the man whose
experience in the miseries of Saaran slavery so far exceeded their own.
"Now, Jim," began the old man-o'-war's-man, "you must spin us the yarn
of all your cruising since you've been here. We've seen somethin' o'
the elephant since we've been cast ashore, and that's not long. I don't
wonder at you sayin' you 'ave been aboard this craft forty-three years."
"Yes, that is the correct time according to my reckoning," interrupted
Jim; "but, Bill, you don't look much older than when I saw you last.
How long ago was it?"
"About eleven years."
"Eleven years! I tell you that I've been here over forty."
"'Ow can that be?" asked Bill. "Dang it, man, you'll not be forty years
old till the fourteenth o' next month. You 'ave lost yer senses, an' in
troth, it ain't no wonder!"
"That is true, for there is nothing in the Saara to help a man keep his
reckoning. There are no seasons; and every day is as like another as
two seconds in the same minute. But surely I must have been here for
more than eleven years?"
"No," answered Bill, "ye 'ave no been here only a wee bit langer than
tin; but afther all ye must 'ave suffered in that time it is quare that
ye should a know'd me at all, at all."
"I did not know you until you spoke," rejoined Jim. "Then I couldn't
doubt that it was you who stood before me, when I heard our father's
broad Scotch, our mother's Irish brogue, and the talk of the cockneys
amongst whom your earliest days were passed, all mingled together."
"You see, Master Colly," said Bill, turning to the young Scotchman, "my
brother Jim has had the advantage of being twelve years younger than I;
and when he was old enough to go to school, I was doing something to
help kape him there, and for all that I believe he is plased to see me."
"Pleased to see you!" exclaimed Jim. "Of course I am."
"I'm sure av it," said Bill. "Well, then, brother, go ahead, an' spin
us your yarn."
"I have no one yarn to spin," replied Jim, "for a narrative of my
adventures in the desert would consist of a thousand yarns, each giving
a description of some severe suffering or disappointment. I can only
tell you that it seems to me that I have passed many years in travelling
through the sands of the Saara, years in cultivating barley on its
borders, years in digging wells, and years in attending flocks of goats,
sheep, and other animals. I have had many masters, all bad, and some
worse, and I have had many cruel disappointments about regaining my
liberty. I was once within a single day's journey of Mogador; and was
then sold again and carried back into the very heart of the desert. I
have attempted two or three times to escape; but was recaptured each
time, and nearly killed for the unpardonable dishonesty of trying to rob
my master of my own person. I have often been tempted to commit
suicide; but a sort of womanly curiosity and stubbornness has prevented
me. I wished to see how long Fortune would persecute me; and I was
determined not to thwart her plans by putting myself beyond their reach.
I did not like to give in: for anyone who tries to escape from trouble
by killing himself shows that he has come off sadly worsted in the war
of life."
"You are quite right," said Harry Blount; "but I hope that your hardest
battles in that war are now over. Our masters have promised to carry us
to some place where we may be ransomed by our countrymen, and you of
course will be taken along with us."
"Do not flatter yourselves with that hope," said Jim. "I was amused
with it for several years. Every master I have had gave me the same
promise, and here I am yet. I did think when my late owners were saving
the stone from the wreck, that I could get them to enter the walls of
some seaport town, and that possibly they might take me along with them.
But that hope has proved as delusive as all others I have entertained
since shipwrecked on the shore of this accursed country. I believe
there are a few who are fortunate enough to regain their liberty; but
the majority of sailors cast away on the Saaran coast never have the
good fortune to get away from it. They die under the hardships and
ill-treatment to which they are exposed upon the desert, without leaving
a trace of their existence any more than the dogs or camels belonging to
their common masters.
"You have asked me to give an account of my life since I have been
shipwrecked. I cannot do that; but I shall give you an easy rule by
which you may know all about it. We will suppose you have all been
three months in the Saara, and Bill here says that I have been here ten
years; therefore I have experienced about forty times as long a period
of slavery as one of yourselves. Now, multiply the sum total of your
sufferings by forty, and you will have some idea of what I have
undergone.
"You have probably witnessed some scenes of heartless cruelty--scenes
that shocked and wounded the most sensitive feelings of your nature. I
have witnessed forty times as many. While suffering the agonies of
thirst and hunger, you may have prayed for death as a relief to your
anguish. Where such have been your circumstances once, they have been
mine for forty times.
"You may have had some bright hopes of escaping, and once more
revisiting your native land; and then have experienced the bitterness of
disappointment. In this way I have suffered forty times as much as any
one of you."
Sailor Bill and the young gentlemen who had been for several days under
the pleasant hallucination that they were on the high road to freedom,
were again awakened to a true sense of their situation by the words of a
man far more experienced than they in the deceitful ways of the desert.
Before separating for the night, the three mids learnt from Bill and his
brother that the latter had been first officer of the ship that had
brought him to the coast. They could perceive by his conversation that
he was an intelligent man, one whose natural abilities and artificial
acquirements were far superior to those of their shipmate, the old
man-of-war's-man.
"If such an accomplished individual," reasoned they, "has been for ten
years a slave in the Saara, unable to escape or reach any place where
his liberty might be restored, what hope is there for us?"