Produced by Mary Meehan and The Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
THE BOY SLAVES.
BY CAPT. MAYNE REID
AUTHOR OF "THE DESERT HOME," "THE OCEAN WAIFS," ETC.
With Illustrations.
A NEW EDITION,
WITH A MEMOIR BY R. H. STODDARD.
NEW YORK:
THOMAS R. KNOX & CO.,
Successors to James Miller,
813 Broadway.
Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District
of Massachusetts.
Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1884, by
THOMAS R. KNOX & CO.,
in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
New York, January 1st, 1869.
Messrs. Fields, Osgood & Co.:--
I accept the terms offered, and hereby concede to you the exclusive
right of publication, in the United States, of all my juvenile Tales
of Adventure, known as Boys' Novels.
MAYNE REID.
TROW'S
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY,
NEW YORK.
[Illustration: THE DEATH OF GOLAH.]
AUTHOR'S NOTE.
Captain Mayne Reid is pleased to have had the help of an American Author
in preparing for publication this story of "The Boy Slaves," and takes
the present opportunity of acknowledging that help, which has kindly
extended beyond matters of merely external form, to points of narrative
and composition, which are here embodied with the result of his own
labor.
The Rancho, December, 1864.
MEMOIR OF MAYNE REID.
No one who has written books for the young during the present century
ever had so large a circle of readers as Captain Mayne Reid, or ever was
so well fitted by circumstances to write the books by which he is
chiefly known. His life, which was an adventurous one, was ripened with
the experience of two Continents, and his temperament, which was an
ardent one, reflected the traits of two races. Irish by birth, he was
American in his sympathies with the people of the New World, whose
acquaintance he made at an early period, among whom he lived for years,
and whose battles he helped to win. He was probably more familiar with
the Southern and Western portion of the United States forty years ago
than any native-born American of that time. A curious interest attaches
to the life of Captain Reid, but it is not of the kind that casual
biographers dwell upon. If he had written it himself it would have
charmed thousands of readers, who can now merely imagine what it might
have been from the glimpses of it which they obtain in his writings. It
was not passed in the fierce light of publicity, but in that simple,
silent obscurity which is the lot of most men, and is their happiness,
if they only knew it.
Briefly related, the life of Captain Reid was as follows: He was born in
1818, in the north of Ireland, the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, who
was a type of the class which Goldsmith has described so freshly in the
"Deserted Village," and was highly thought of for his labors among the
poor of his neighborhood. An earnest, reverent man, to whom his calling
was indeed a sacred one, he designed his son Mayne for the ministry, in
the hope, no doubt, that he would be his successor. But nature had
something to say about that, as well as his good father. He began to
study for the ministry, but it was not long before he was drawn in
another direction. Always a great reader, his favorite books were
descriptions of travel in foreign lands, particularly those which dealt
with the scenery, the people, and the resources of America. The spell
which these exercised over his imagination, joined to a love of
adventure which was inherent in his temperament, and inherited, perhaps
with his race, determined his career. At the age of twenty he closed his
theological tomes, and girding up his loins with a stout heart he sailed
from the shores of the Old World for the New. Following the spirit in
his feet he landed at New Orleans, which was probably a more promising
field for a young man of his talents than any Northern city, and was
speedily engaged in business. The nature of this business is not stated,
further than it was that of a trader; but whatever it was it obliged
this young Irishman to make long journeys into the interior of the
country, which was almost a _terra incognita_. Sparsely settled, where
settled at all, it was still clothed in primeval verdure--here in the
endless reach of savannas, there in the depth of pathless woods, and far
away to the North and the West in those monotonous ocean-like levels of
land for which the speech of England has no name--the Prairies. Its
population was nomadic, not to say barbaric, consisting of tribes of
Indians whose hunting grounds from time immemorial the region was;
hunters and trappers, who had turned their backs upon civilization for
the free, wild life of nature; men of doubtful or dangerous antecedents,
who had found it convenient to leave their country for their country's
good; and scattered about hardy pioneer communities from Eastern States,
advancing waves of the great sea of emigration which is still drawing
the course of empire westward. Travelling in a country like this, and
among people like these, Mayne Reid passed five years of his early
manhood. He was at home wherever he went, and never more so than when
among the Indians of the Red River territory, with whom he spent several
months, learning their language, studying their customs, and enjoying
the wild and beautiful scenery of their camping grounds. Indian for the
time, he lived in their lodges, rode with them, hunted with them, and
night after night sat by their blazing camp-fires listening to the
warlike stories of the braves and the quaint legends of the medicine
men. There was that in the blood of Mayne Reid which fitted him to lead
this life at this time, and whether he knew it or not it educated his
genius as no other life could have done. It familiarized him with a
large extent of country in the South and West; it introduced him to men
and manners which existed nowhere else; and it revealed to him the
secrets of Indian life and character.
There was another side, however, to Mayne Reid than that we have touched
upon, and this, at the end of five years, drew him back to the average
life of his kind. We find him next in Philadelphia, where he began to
contribute stories and sketches of travel to the newspapers and
magazines. Philadelphia was then the most literate city in the United
States, the one in which a clever writer was at once encouraged and
rewarded. Frank and warm-hearted, he made many friends there among
journalists and authors. One of these friends was Edgar Allan Poe, whom
he often visited at his home in Spring Garden, and concerning whom years
after, when he was dead, he wrote with loving tenderness.
The next episode in the career of Mayne Reid was not what one would
expect from a man of letters, though it was just what might have been
expected from a man of his temperament and antecedents. It grew out of
the time, which was warlike, and it drove him into the army with which
the United States speedily crushed the forces of the sister
Republic--Mexico. He obtained a commission, and served throughout the
war with great bravery and distinction. This stormy episode ended with a
severe wound, which he received in storming the heights of
Chapultepec--a terrible battle which practically ended the war.
A second episode of a similar character, but with a more fortunate
conclusion, occurred about four years later. It grew out of another war,
which, happily for us, was not on our borders, but in the heart of
Europe, where the Hungarian race had risen in insurrection against the
hated power of Austria. Their desperate valor in the face of tremendous
odds excited the sympathy of the American people, and fired the heart of
Captain Mayne Reid, who buckled on his sword once more, and sailed from
New York with a body of volunteers to aid the Hungarians in their
struggles for independence. They were too late, for hardly had they
reached Paris before they learned that all was over: Goergey had
surrendered at Arad, and Hungary was crushed. They were at once
dismissed, and Captain Reid betook himself to London.
The life of the Mayne Reid in whom we are most interested--Mayne Reid,
the author--began at this time, when he was in his thirty-first year,
and ended only on the day of his death, October 21, 1883. It covered
one-third of a century, and was, when compared with that which had
preceded it, uneventful, if not devoid of incident. There is not much
that needs be told--not much, indeed, that can be told--in the life of a
man of letters like Captain Mayne Reid. It is written in his books.
Mayne Reid was one of the best known authors of his time--differing in
this from many authors who are popular without being known--and in the
walk of fiction which he discovered for himself he is an acknowledged
master. His reputation did not depend upon the admiration of the
millions of young people who read his books, but upon the judgment of
mature critics, to whom his delineations of adventurous life were
literature of no common order. His reputation as a story-teller was
widely recognized on the Continent, where he was accepted as an
authority in regard to the customs of the pioneers and the guerilla
warfare of the Indian tribes, and was warmly praised for his freshness,
his novelty, and his hardy originality. The people of France and Germany
delighted in this soldier-writer. "There was not a word in his books
which a school-boy could not safely read aloud to his mother and
sisters." So says a late English critic, to which another adds, that if
he has somewhat gone out of fashion of late years, the more's the pity
for the school-boy of the period. What Defoe is in Robinson
Crusoe--realistic idyl of island solitude--that, in his romantic stories
of wilderness life, is his great scholar, Captain Mayne Reid.
R. H. Stoddard.
CONTENTS.
I The Land of the Slave
II. Types of the Triple Kingdom
III. The Serpent's Tongue
IV. 'Ware the Tide!
V. A False Guide
VI. Wade or Swim?
VII. A Compulsory Parting
VIII. Safe Ashore
IX. Uncomfortable Quarters
XI. 'Ware the Sand!
XII. A Mysterious Nightmare
XIII. The Maherry
XIV. A Liquid Breakfast
XV. The Sailor among the Shell-fish
XVI. Keeping under Cover
XVII. The Trail on the Sand
XVIII. The "Desert Ship"
XIX. Homeward Bound
XX. The Dance Interrupted
XXI. A Serio-Comical Reception
XXII. The Two Sheiks
XXIII. Sailor Bill Beshrewed
XXIV. Starting on the Track
XXV. Bill to be Abandoned
XXVI. A Cautious Retreat
XXVII. A Queer Quadruped
XXVIII. The Hue and Cry
XXIX. A Subaqueous Asylum
XXX. The Pursuers Nonplussed
XXXI. A Double Predicament
XXXII. Once more the mocking Laugh
XXXIII. A Cunning Sheik
XXXIV. A Queer Encounter
XXXV. Holding on to the Hump
XXXVI. Our Adventures in Undress
XXXVII. The Captives in Conversation
XXXVIII. The Douar at Dawn
XXXIX. An Obstinate Dromedary
XL. Watering the Camels
XLI. A Squabble between the Sheiks
XLII. The Trio Staked
XLIII. Golah
XLIV. A Day of Agony
XLV. Colin in Luck
XLVI. Sailor Bill's Experiment
XLVII. An Unjust Reward
XLVIII. The Waterless Well
XLIX. The Well
L. A Momentous Inquiry
LI. A Living Grave
LII. The Sheik's Plan of Revenge
LIII. Captured Again
LIV. An Unfaithful Wife
LV. Two Faithful Wives
LVI. Fatima's Fate
LVII. Further Defection
LVIII. A Call for Two More
LIX. Once More by the Sea
LX. Golah Calls Again
LXI. Sailor Bill Standing Sentry
LXII. Golah Fulfils his Destiny
LXIII. On the Edge of the Saaera
LXIV. The Rival Wreckers
LXV. Another White Slave
LXVI. Sailor Bill's Brother
LXVII. A Living Stream
LXVIII. The Arabs at Home
LXIX. Work or Die
LXX. Victory!
LXXI. Sold Again
LXXII. Onward Once More
LXXIII. Another Bargain
LXXIV. More Torture
LXXV. En Route
LXXVI. Hope Deferred
LXXVII. El Hajji
LXXVIII. Bo Muzem's Journey
LXXIX. Rais Mourad
LXXX. Bo Muzem Back Again
LXXXI. A Pursuit
LXXXII. Moorish Justice
LXXXIII. The Jew's Leap
LXXXIV. Conclusion
THE BOY SLAVES.
CHAPTER I.
THE LAND OF THE SLAVE.
Land of Ethiope! whose burning centre seems unapproachable as the frozen
Pole!
Land of the unicorn and the lion,--of the crouching panther and the
stately elephant,--of the camel, the camelopard, and the camel-bird!
land of the antelopes,--of the wild gemsbok, and the gentle
gazelle,--land of the gigantic crocodile and huge river-horse,--land
teeming with animal life, and last in the list of my apostrophic
appellations,--last, and that which must grieve the heart to pronounce
it,--land of the slave!
Ah! little do men think while thus hailing thee, how near may be the
dread doom to their own hearths and homes! Little dream they, while
expressing their sympathy,--alas! too often, as of late shown in
England, a hypocritical utterance,--little do they suspect, while glibly
commiserating the lot of thy sable-skinned children, that hundreds--aye,
thousands--of their own color and kindred are held within thy confines,
subject to a lot even lowlier than these,--a fate far more fearful.
Alas! it is even so. While I write, the proud Caucasian,--despite his
boasted superiority of intellect,--despite the whiteness of his
skin,--may be found by hundreds in the unknown interior, wretchedly
toiling, the slave not only of thy oppressors, but the slave of thy
slaves!
Let us lift that curtain, which shrouds thy great Saaera, and look upon
some pictures that should teach the son of Shem, while despising his
brothers Ham and Japhet, that he is not yet master of the world.
* * * * *
Dread is that shore between Susa and Senegal, on the western edge of
Africa,--by mariners most dreaded of any other in the world. The very
thought of it causes the sailor to shiver with affright. And no wonder:
on that inhospitable seaboard thousands of his fellows have found a
watery grave; and thousands of others a doom far more deplorable than
death!
There are two great deserts: one of land, the other of water,--the Saaera
and the Atlantic,--their contiguity extending through ten degrees of the
earth's latitude,--an enormous distance. Nothing separates them, save a
line existing only in the imagination. The dreary and dangerous
wilderness of water kisses the wilderness of sand,--not less dreary or
dangerous to those whose misfortune it may be to become castaways on
this dreaded shore.
Alas! it has been the misfortune of many--not hundreds, but thousands.
Hundreds of ships, rather than hundreds of men, have suffered wreck and
ruin between Susa and Senegal. Perhaps were we to include Roman,
Ph[oe]nician, and Carthaginian, we might say thousands of ships also.
More noted, however, have been the disasters of modern times, during
what may be termed the epoch of modern navigation. Within the period of
the last three centuries, sailors of almost every maritime nation--at
least all whose errand has led them along the eastern edge of the
Atlantic--have had reason to regret approximation to those shores, known
in ship parlance as the Barbary coast; but which, with a slight
alteration in the orthography, might be appropriately styled
"Barbarian."
A chapter might be written in explanation of this peculiarity of
expression--a chapter which would comprise many parts of two sciences,
both but little understood--ethnology and meteorology.
Of the former we may have a good deal to tell before the ending of this
narrative. Of the latter it must suffice to say: that the frequent
wrecks occurring on the Barbary coast--or, more properly, on that of the
Saaera south of it--are the result of an Atlantic current setting
eastwards against that shore.
The cause of this current is simple enough, though it requires
explanation: since it seems to contradict not only the theory of the
"trade" winds, but of the centrifugal inclination attributed to the
waters of the ocean.
I have room only for the theory in its simplest form. The heating of the
Saaera under a tropical sun; the absence of those influences--moisture
and verdure--which repel the heat and retain its opposite; the ascension
of the heated air that hangs over this vast tract of desert; the colder
atmosphere rushing in from the Atlantic Ocean; the consequent eastward
tendency of the waters of the sea.
These facts will account for that current which has proved a deadly
maelstrom to hundreds--aye, thousands--of ships, in all ages, whose
misfortune it has been to sail unsuspectingly along the western shores
of the Ethiopian continent.
Even at the present day the castaways upon this desert shore are by no
means rare, notwithstanding the warnings that at close intervals have
been proclaimed for a period of three hundred years.
While I am writing, some stranded brig, barque, or ship may be going to
pieces between Bojador and Blanco; her crew making shorewards in boats
to be swamped among the foaming breakers; or, riding three or four
together upon some severed spar, to be tossed upon a desert strand, that
each may wish, from the bottom of his soul, should prove _uninhabited_!
I can myself record a scene like this that occurred not ten years ago,
about midway between the two headlands above named--Bojador and Blanco.
The locality may be more particularly designated by saying: that, at
half distance between these noted capes, a narrow strip of sand extends
for several miles out into the Atlantic, parched white under the rays of
a tropical sun--like the tongue of some fiery serpent, well represented
by the Saaera, far stretching to seaward; ever seeking to cool itself in
the crystal waters of the sea.