were to understand that they might as well seek the wind as hope to recover their stolen property, we should either be sold at the nearest market, or placed under some horrible and fiendish torture to die a slow, agonising death. Suddenly a wild yell rent the air, and before we were aware of it a troop of some fifty horsemen dashed in among us, so quickly that resistance was impossible. Hand-to-hand we struggled, straining every muscle to evade our enemies, but ere long the obstinate, heroic courage of my companions could no longer blind them to the approach of the inevitable, and we were each secured and bound, captives in the hands of the merciless veiled men of the desert, whose fierce brutality was feared alike by slaves and Sultans throughout the sun-parched land.
Our arms were twisted from our grasp, our camels’ packs seized, and, linked together ignominiously by chains around our necks, we were secured to three palm trunks, under a strong guard with loaded rifles, to wait while our captors investigated their booty and reloaded our camels. Nearly two hours this occupied, when at length the grey-bearded, sinister-faced leader of the band of free-booters gave the order to mount, and before long the party, numbering nearly three hundred horsemen armed to the teeth, moved away into the sandy wilderness, compelling us to trudge over the hot, stony ground on foot under the fiery rays of the blazing sun. It was evident that we were to be sold as slaves. One unfortunate camel-driver, who had been wounded, fell from sheer exhaustion within the first hour, and was left to die, for slave-raiders like “The Breath of the Wind” regard the wounded only as an encumbrance, and as they will not sell they are either put out of their misery by a shot, or left to die of thirst and become food for the vultures. Fortunately, with the exception of a slight cut on the left hand received from a jambiyah with which one of my captors had slashed at me, I sustained no injury, and with my companions, a little band of silent, despairing men, I plodded wearily onward – onward to be sold into slavery.
Upon all the perpendicular rays of the sun beat down with a heat as burning and intense as that of a fiery furnace, and always – always for a horizon – the desert, the infinite breadth of glaring sands.
Chapter Nine
An Audience of the Khalifa
Those days of burning heat were full of horrors. Treated with scant humanity, we were half-starved, allowed only sufficient water to slake our thirst once a day, and beaten mercilessly with thongs of rhinoceros hide whenever one, more faint and weary than the rest, lagged behind. Eastward we travelled for six days, until, at the well of Lassera Dar Abd-er-Rahman, we were sold for two small bags of gold to some nomad Dasas encamped there. The Tuaregs dare not enter a town in the Eastern Soudan, although, in the West, they are universally dreaded on account of their depredations; therefore they always sell their captives to other slavers, who dispose of their human wares at the nearest trade centre. Hence, by our new masters we were conveyed to Dara, a town one day’s journey south of El Fasher, placed in the slave market, and, after considerable haggling, disposed of.
My new master was a well-dressed, keen-eyed, wizen-faced old Arab of the tribe known as Jalin, who, after inspecting me and looking into my mouth as he would a horse, handed payment with ill grace to the black-faced scoundrel who sold me, and ordered me to follow him. Together we passed out of the busy, bustling crowd, when he addressed me, asking my name.
“Art thou an Arab from the North?” he exclaimed in surprise, when I had told him who I was, and the place of my birth. “How earnest thou hither?”
“I fell into the hands of the Tuaregs, upon whom may the curse of Eblis rest!” I answered, hesitating to inform him at present that I was a Dervish.
As we walked to the city gate, where he said his camels were tethered, he told me his name was Shazan, and, judge my extreme satisfaction when he added that he was about to return to Omdurman, where he lived opposite the Beit-el-Amana. Hence, my stroke of ill-fortune turned out advantageous, for within a week I found myself once again within the great walls of the Khalifa’s stronghold. Then my new master having treated me harshly, I resolved at last that he should suffer, therefore I applied to the Kaid for release from slavery, on the ground that I was a member of the Ansar of the Khalifa. Old Shazan, amazed that his latest purchase should turn out to be one of his great ruler’s bodyguard, rated me soundly for not informing him at first, but I laughed, telling him that I had desired to get to Omdurman, and kept my own counsel, until such time as it suited me. Knowing that he would lose the money he had paid for me, the close-fisted old merchant refused to comply with the order made by the Kaid for my release, but the rumour of my escape from Kano, coming to the ears of the great Abdullah, the latter one day sent six of his personal attendants with orders to release me, and to bring me before him.
The shadows were lengthening in the marble courts of the “Bab,” or great palace of the Mahdi’s tyrannical successor, when I was conducted across the outer square, where brightly-dressed guards were lounging on their rifles, or playing damma beneath the cool, vine-veiled arches. Never before had I been permitted to set foot inside the court, although many times had I passed under the shadow of the Iron Mosque near by, and gazed with curiosity at the high walls, smeared with red sand, which encircled the marble courts, gilded pavilions and cool gardens of the ruler of the Soudan – the ruler whose only idea was self-aggrandisement. The extent of the palace amazed me, for, even if it was scarcely as luxurious as the wonderful Fada at Kano, it was assuredly quite as large. Through one open, sunlit court after another we passed, until we were challenged by four of the royal bodyguard with drawn swords, but a word propitiated them, and a few seconds later I found myself in the great, marble-built Hall of Audience, in the presence of the stout, sinister-faced man of middle age and kingly bearing, with black, scraggy beard, whose name was a power throughout the Soudan. He wore a robe of bright purple, embroidered with gold, a turban of white silk, and his fat, brown hands were loaded with rings of enormous value.
Beneath a great baldachin of bright yellow silk, with tassels and fringes of gold, surmounted by the standard of the Mahdi, the powerful Abdullah, the ruler before whom all trembled, reclined upon his luxurious silken divan, fanned by black slaves on either side, while a negro lad sat at his feet, ready to hand him a pipe, the mouth-piece of which was studded with diamonds. Around him were grouped his body-servants, the mulazimin, and officers, while near him was Abdel Gayum, the chief eunuch, his hand resting upon his sword, and Ali Wad Helu, chief of the Baggara, who had led the ill-fated expedition of which I had been a member.
Conducted by my guides up to the scarlet mat spread before the potentate, who thought himself master of the whole world, I fell upon my knees in obeisance, expressing thanks for my rescue from bondage.
“Let him be seated,” the Khalifa ordered, turning to his slaves, and in an instant cushions were brought, and I sat myself, cross-legged, awaiting questions to fall from his lips. “What, I wondered, had I done that I was allowed to sit in the royal presence?”
“So thou art the Arab Zafar-Ben-A’Ziz, the horseman who alone escaped death at the well of Sabo-n-Gari?” exclaimed the vain, cruel, quick-tempered man who ruled the Soudan under the guise of Mahdiism.
“I am, O King,” I answered, bowing until my forehead touched the carpet.
“Of a verity will I punish those enemies who attacked my Jehadieh,” he cried suddenly, in fiercest rage. “Where be those owls, those oxen of the oxen, those beggars, those cut-off ones, those aliens, those Sons of Flight? Withered be their hands! palsied be their fingers! the foul moustachioed fellows! basest of the Arabs who ever hammered tent-peg! sneaking cats! goats of Al-Akhfash! Truly will I torture them with the torture of oil, the mines of infamy, the cold of countenance! By Allah, and by Allah, and by Allah, we will crush those sons of Ach Chaitan like snakes, and throw their bodies to the dogs!” Then, turning to me in calmer mood, the autocrat of the Soudan exclaimed, “Some of thine adventures have already reached mine ear, and I would hear from thine own lips how thou didst escape and how farest thou in the Fada of ’Othman of Sokoto. Let not thy tongue hurry, but relate carefully in thine own words what things occurred
