With my feet upon the heap of dirty, evil-smelling straw, I stood
hesitating how to act. Of the size or character of my cell I knew
nothing; therefore, after reviewing the situation as calmly as I could,
I started to feel the walls and ascertain their exact proportions. The
place, I found, was small, horribly small. Its height was only just
sufficient to allow me to stand upright, while it was not long enough to
allow me to lie down except in a crouching, uncomfortable position, its
breadth being just two paces.
When, after making myself acquainted with these details, I stood
reflecting upon my position, I heard a slight movement in the straw at
my feet, and as I bent to ascertain the cause my hand came into contact
with the chill, smooth body of a large snake which I had evidently
disturbed.
Its contact thrilled me. I drew my hand away in horror, springing back
towards the wall, expecting each moment to feel my leg bitten.
Straining my eyes into the darkness I did my utmost to discover the
whereabouts of the reptile, believing that if it had its bead-like eyes
fixed upon me I could detect their brightness. But though I heard a
slow rustling among the straw, my enemy seemed in no mood for attack,
and I waited motionless, not daring to stir. To be doomed to live and
sleep in company of a snake was certainly one of the most hideous
tortures to which a man could be subjected, and was a refinement of
cruelty equal to any of the revolting barbarities I had witnessed while
serving under the standards of the Mahdi and the Khalifa. But the hours
dragged on, and although my fellow occupant of the cell remained silent,
apparently content, the dungeon itself was weirdly horrible. The cries
of my fellow captives, some of whom were perfectly sane and others
palpably mad from torture and long confinement, resounded through the
place with startling suddenness, and I could hear those whose minds were
unhinged gnashing their teeth and beating their bars in vain, frantic
effort to obtain release.
With these horrors about me, the whole of my past seamed to flit through
my mind--a panorama of wild free life and exciting adventure. My sudden
unconsciousness after my fall at the well of Sabo-n-Gari, my strange
awakening, and the vision of incomparable beauty that had risen before
my wondering, fevered eyes, all recurred to me in hazy indistinctness,
like some weird, half-remembered dream. But the pale, anxious face of
Azala, who had fought so hard to save me falling into the merciless
clutches of my pitiless captors, came before me--vivid, distinct,
entrancing. Her every feature was engraven indelibly upon my memory,
and her voice seemed to repeat in soft, musical Arabic those strange,
mysterious words that had thrilled and entranced me.
She trusted me, she had said. Would she, I wondered, be successful in
releasing me from this horribly maddening captivity? That she would use
every endeavour of which she was capable I was confident; nevertheless,
I knew well the enormity of my crime, and feared that even her earnest
words would not soften the flint heart of the relentless Sultan 'Othman,
whose every whim was law within his own extensive kingdom.
Well I knew the manner of living of this dreaded ruler of the Western
Soudan. He formed the etiquette of his brilliant court upon that of the
Khalifa's, keeping himself strictly invisible to the vulgar gaze. He
seldom exposed himself to perish of the evil eye. It was he who
compelled the women throughout his empire to lead the life of the
Eastern harem, and forbade that any (married or single) should show
themselves unveiled, making his own family set the example. People
approaching the Sultan in audience covered their heads with dust: he
never spoke directly to assemblies nor to the people, but always dealt
with them through the medium of a herald. Upon the occasions of his
going out, his _cortege_ was preceded by musicians, drums, and trumpets,
and he rode in solitary state, with his suite at a respectable distance
behind. Servants marched surrounding his horse, and holding by turns to
his saddle; they were called foot companions, and their head-man was the
"master of the road." Only one drum was allowed to precede them, and
musicians kept silent when in sight of a town in which the Sultan was
residing.
She had spoken of strange marvels, of hidden mysteries that require
elucidation, of perils, and of her own misery. Why had unhappiness
consumed her? Why, indeed, had she concealed so much from me? For
hours I pondered over the veiled words she had uttered, seeking in them
some explanation, but finding none.
Then I remembered the hideous blemish upon her fair breast--that mystic
mark exactly identical with mine. What, I wondered, could these
entwined asps denote? The words of my dead mother rang in my ears:
"Seek not to discover its significance until thou meetest with its exact
counterpart. Then strive night and day to learn the truth, for, if thou
canst elucidate the mystery, thine ears will listen unto strange things,
and thine eyes behold wondrous marvels."
Upon the breast of Azala, the Princess, I had discovered that which I
had sought throughout my eventful life, yet even in that moment evil
fortune had befallen me, and now, instead of being free to strive
towards solving the enigma, I was held captive in that dismal,
evil-smelling dungeon, under sentence of death.
Days dragged by--dull, dismal, dispiriting. Suffering the anguish of
separation and lost happiness, my whole life seemed wounded. In the
dark, damp cell, surrounded by a thousand horrors, oppressed by a
thousand vague regrets and bitter thoughts, I awaited the end. Indeed,
as the long hours slowly passed, it surprised me that my captors did not
drag me forth to die. Once a day three negro guards, heavily armed,
appeared and cast to us a little _dodowa_, or kind of cake made of
vegetables, with as little ceremony as if they were giving food to dogs,
while a slave filled our earthen vessel with water; but we had no
exercise, and were compelled to remain behind our bars like animals
entrapped.
My cell had been occupied quite recently by some poor wretch, who,
according to the story of a half-starved Arab in captivity near me, had
died of fever only a few days before my arrival, and with whom the
serpent who made his abode there had apparently been on friendly terms.
At first both the reptile and myself were consumed by a mutual fear of
one another, but on close acquaintanceship he grew to regard me as
harmless, and really performed me a service by clearing the mice and
other vermin from my narrow, suffocating den.
Once a loud, piercing shriek escaped one of my half-demented fellow
captives, who declared he had been bitten by a scorpion, and, to my
dismay, the same reptile found its way through the bars of my cell some
hours later, but fortunately I detected it in time, driving it out
before it could attack me. Hour by hour, day by day, I crouched,
disconsolate and despairing, in the almost impenetrable gloom.
Accustomed as I was to the wild life of the plains, confinement amid
such loathsome surroundings was doubly irksome and nauseating.
In that Stygian darkness day was like night, and I could keep no count
of time; but with the harsh gibberings of idiots always grating on my
ears, I grew apprehensive that ere long I, too, must become demented.
My respite from death I attributed to the intervention of the fair woman
whose wondrous beauty had enmeshed me, and whose words of mystery had
aroused in me an intense, unconquerable desire to solve the one great
enigma of my life.
Yet as time went on and relief came not, I began to fear that the eunuch
had spoken the truth when he informed Azala of the Sultan's absence, and
that, fearing to order me to execution, Khazneh had resolved that I
should be driven to madness in that foul, foetid dungeon, where so many
captives had pined and died. Many times I had heard how the great
Sultan 'Othman was ruled almost entirely by harem influence; how the
bright-eyed, imperious Sultana of to-day might be a mangled corpse torn
to pieces by the yelping jackals at the city-gate to-morrow; how a
single word whispered by a dark-haired houri into the ear of her lord
might either cause a courtier's head to fall, or secure for some menial
an exalted office of power, with many slaves and fat emoluments.
Indeed, it was notorious throughout the Soudan that in the great Fada of
the Sultan of Sokoto none was safe. Wives, courtiers, guards, eunuchs,
slaves, all trembled, fearing to arouse the anger of the brutal
autocrat, for well were they aware that the keen _doka_ of the black
executioner was kept ever busy, and none knew whose head next might
fall. Black plots and dastardly intrigues were constantly at work
within the great Courts of the Harem. The favourite, one day loaded
with costly jewels, basking in the smiles of her august master, radiant
upon her divan and ruler of the gilded Courts of Enchantment, would
assuredly sooner or later fall a victim to the jealousy of her less
fortunate sisters, and be compelled to wash the feet of the bright-eyed
slave her whilom handmaiden, become the wife of some common soldier, or
drink the fatal draught from the golden Cup of Death.
Yet amid such surroundings, continually witnessing the complicated plots
and counter-plots engendered by the fiercest feminine hatred, with
unceremonious strangling, poisoning or decapitation as the inevitable
result, lived Azala, pure as the jasmine-flower, bright as the sunrise
on the Great Desert, graceful as the rose bending beneath the evening
zephyr, a maiden of absolutely incomparable countenance and entrancing
loveliness.
For nearly a whole moon had I remained in my foul, dank kennel, when one
morning four gaudily-attired Janissaries released me, and, without
deigning to reply to my eager questions, conducted me out of the dungeon
and up the worn and broken flight of stairs to the blessed light of day.
So long had I been in darkness that the sun's glare blinded me, and
keenly apprehensive that Azala's efforts had been unavailing, and that I
was at last being led to execution, I walked on between my guards,
inert, dejected and despairing.
A dozen Janissaries, each armed with gleaming scimitar and _jambiyah_,
joined us, as across one great open courtyard after another was I
conducted in procession solemn and funereal. The magnitude and
magnificence of those squares, with great plashing fountains, tall palms
and colonnades of dead-white horse-shoe arches, astounded me. Evidently
they were the outer courts of the palace, for at each gate there stood
Janissaries in uniforms of blue and gold, with drawn swords, erect,
silent, statuesque. Leaving the Courts of Love, the innermost centre of
the great Fada, we crossed the Court of the Grand Vizier, the Court of
the Gado (Lord of the Treasury), the Court of the Eunuchs, the Court of
the Janissaries, the Court of the Armourers and many others, each larger
and more massive in construction, until at length we came to the great,
arched outer gate, the only entrance to this sumptuous and gigantic
dwelling-place of one of the most powerful potentates of Al-Islam. Here
my heart sank within me, for awaiting us was the executioner, a big,
brutal negro, who carried over his shoulder his great _doka_, or keen,
curved sword, that had smote off so many heads of men and women.
Instinctively I knew my fate. I was being conducted to the Kaboga, or
place of execution, there to die.
As we approached, the ponderous gate opened and with a loud blast from a
dozen blatant wind instruments of curious shape there entered a man
attired in white, sitting erect on a richly-caparisoned, coal-black Arab
horse, and followed by a crowd of mounted attendants and guards on foot.
"May Allah, the One Granter of Requests, envelop our lord the Sultan
with the Cloak of Peace," cried the guards, lifting their bass voices
with one accord, salaaming before the sharp-eyed man, whose black beard
was well trimmed, and in whose crimson turban gleamed a magnificent
aigrette of diamonds.
Three loud blasts and the roll of a drum announced the return of the
Sultan 'Othman. Each time slaves and guards bent low with reverent
genuflexions, and each time they lifted aloud their voices in praise of
his Imperial Majesty.
As, tongue-tied in amazement, I gazed upon the brilliant cavalcade of
the powerful autocrat whose fame had been carried over the boundless
deserts even to Omdurman, his keen glance fell upon me. Upon his dark,
sensual face, in which cruelty was strongly marked, there rested for a
second a shadow of displeasure, then reining his horse close to me his
searching eyes wandered to the executioner and the Janissaries.
Scarcely had I sufficient clothes to cover me, and what I wore were
ragged and dirty, yet with the pride of my race I drew myself up, facing
him boldly.
In deep, stern tones he demanded of his Grand Vizier beside him, whose
name was Mahaza, son of Alhan, the nature of the crime for which I was
to suffer.
"During thine absence, O Mirror of Virtue, yonder spy, an accursed
Dervish from Omdurman, hath been discovered by Khazneh, Aga of the
women, attired in a woman's haick, concealed within thy Courts of
Enchantment."
"In my harem?" exclaimed the Sultan, whose angry eyes flashed in my
direction. "By what means did the dog obtain admission?"
"I know not, O Branch of Honour," answered the Grand Vizier, but at that
moment Khazneh, in robes of bright yellow silk, pushed forward, and
making a deep obeisance, exclaimed,--
"Give leave unto thy servant to speak, O lord, our Sultan. I found the
Dervish spy concealed within the pavilion of thy daughter Azala."
The Sultan 'Othman glared at me with brows contracted, and uttered a
fierce and terrible curse upon his enemy the Khalifa. His soul in an
instant filled with bitterest rage and hate.
"How camest thou, son of _sebel_ to pass the guards of mine innermost
court?" he demanded, in wrathful tones that caused all to tremble.
"I, an Arab of the North, was wounded in battle, and thy daughter, upon
whom may the blessing of the One Bountiful rest, gave unto me succour.
If thou sparest me--"
"Silence, dog!" he roared; then, with a gesture of impatience, turned to
his councillor, saying,--
"Let the spy's head be struck off and placed upon the palace gate as a
warning."
The eyes of my guards, on hearing this, brightened, and they cried: "Thy
will, O Mighty Ruler, is our command," and those holding me pushed me
forward so roughly that my ragged jibbeh was torn from the neck to the
waist, displaying my chest.
The Sultan, with a parting injunction to my captors to place my head
upon the gate and to announce throughout the city that a spy of the
Khalifa had been captured and executed, was about to ride away when
suddenly I noticed that he again fixed his gaze full upon me and sat for
a few seconds perplexed and thoughtful.
"Bring hither thy prisoner. Let him approach me closely," he shouted to
the Janissaries, who were at that moment hurrying me away.
Amazed at the Sultan's sudden change of manner, the Aga of the Eunuchs
and his menials dragged me back before their ruler, who, with his
startled eyes fixed upon my uncovered breast, asked in a tone of awe,--
"Speak, slave! How earnest thou by that mystic mark of the serpents?"
His anger had instantly cooled. He had detected the strange red scar,
and for him it evidently had some serious significance, for he had grown
pale under his manly bronze, and the bejewelled hand that held the reins
trembled slightly.
"Of its origin I have no knowledge," I answered, glancing quickly round
and noticing the effect produced by the monarch's sudden change of
manner.
"Whence comest thou?" he asked, with eagerness unusual to an autocrat.
"From Omdurman. I am of the Ansar of the Khalifa."
"And thy parentage?"
"I was born in the Mountains of Aures, two days' journey from Batna. My
father was the Hadj Yakub Sarraf."
"Yukub Sarraf, the Kaid of El-Manaa?" he inquired quickly, his sinister
face betraying an expression of combined surprise and fear.
"Even so, O Sultan."
The excess of his rage was only equalled by the promptness of his
remorse.
Bending in his saddle for a moment, he examined closely the puzzling
mark upon me, and then, after a few moments' silence, he turned to
Khazneh, who had been standing aghast and amazed, and said,--
"Let the spy's life be spared, but let him be expelled from our midst.
If thou findest him within the confines of our empire after three suns
have set, then let him die. Mount him upon the swiftest _meheri_, and
let twenty guards similarly mounted journey with him until he hath
passed beyond the boundary of Sokoto. I have ordained it. Let it be
done accordingly."
Turning to me he said: "If thou ridest on the wings of haste thy life
shall be spared; but enter not again into this my kingdom, or of a
verity thine head shall fall." And as he turned to ride forward, he
added, in a harsh, strained voice that became softened towards me: "Go,
leave my rose garden of happiness quickly. Go, and may the peace of
Allah, the Omniscient, rest upon thee in the hour of thine adversity."
The all-powerful Sultan, with face pale and agitated, moved slowly
onward across the great court with bowed head, followed by his wondering
councillors and cringing slaves. Next second I was free.