SAILOR BILL'S BROTHER.
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 Saaeran 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. "Daze it, man, you'll not be forty years
old till the fourteenth o' the next month. You 'ave lost yer senses, an'
in troth, it an't no wonder!"
"That is true, for there is nothing in the Saaera 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 'im 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 Saaera, 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 any one 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 stones 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 Saaeran 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 Saaera, 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 Saaera, unable to escape or reach any place where
his liberty might be restored, what hope is there for us?"