CHAPTER XIX.
A BITTER CUP.
IT is now time to return to Harold, and those whom circumstances had placed under his care. Harold's was a strong, firm spirit, but it could hardly bear up under the accumulated afflictions which had so suddenly been heaped upon him. All, indeed, would have been calmly endured, but for the last crushing weight of anguish caused by the loss of his brother. It was terrible to make a calculation as to how long Robin's youth, fine constitution, and brave spirit would be able to maintain a lingering struggle against famine, heat, and thirst—how long it would take to transform the suffering mortal into the rejoicing saint. To have known that Robin had actually died would have been a kind of relief, for Harold was of a less hopeful temperament than his brother. The elder brother did not look for miraculous deliverance from the fiery furnace, but rather for strength to endure the flames.
In his state of deep depression, Miss Petty's thoughtless tongue inflicted perpetual wounds on Harold, as one with a limb crushed under a fragment of rock might yet be sensible to the petty annoyance of an insect's buzz and sting.
"Where do you think that they are dragging us, Harold? Is not this a round-about way to India? Won't the Queen send an army to free us? Do you think we'll be sold as slaves? Are there cannibals in this horrid Arabia?" These, and many other such questions, repeated again and again till a brief reply was extracted, tried sorely the patience of Harold. Whilst, with weary limbs and blistered feet, the young missionary paced the desert way behind the camel, he had to endure this infliction.
After hours of walking, Harold was relieved from his bonds and suffered to mount a camel. This was chiefly an alleviation to misery, because, for a while it relieved him from the necessity of closely following his talkative companion. There was no halt until night, for oases were few and far between; but the excessive length of the stage, which had cost the life of one camel, and the exhausted state of the other unfortunate beasts of burden, compelled a longer rest than usual.
The description of the evening meal need not be repeated. There was little variety in the halts. There was here, however, no sheep to slaughter and no tent to accommodate poor Miss Petty. She and her Lammikin had to bivouac on the bare ground, under the sky. Harold, who was not far from his charges, was startled in the night by shriek upon shriek. Were the Arabs murdering their unfortunate captives? Harold hurried to the spot in time to set his heel on one of the small dark reddish scorpions found in the desert, which had crawled on Shelah's dress.
"Horrible creature! And there's another! I declare that I can't and won't sleep on the sand!" cried Miss Petty, furiously shaking her clothes lest one of the hideous reptiles should be concealed in some fold. But there was nothing else on which to sleep!
Harold returned to his own place near Tewfik, the Bedouin who had first seized him, and who consequently seemed to regard the captive as his own special property. Weariness might have enabled the missionary to find some relief from sorrow in sleep, had he not been kept awake by the loud talking of the Arabs near him. From the few words which he made out, Harold felt assured that he himself was the subject of conversation. What Harold could not understand in the following dialogue, his imagination tolerably well supplied, though gaps of ignorance remained to perplex the mind of the hapless captive.
"We have won poor spoil this time," said the chief of the Shararat band. "These kafirs had hardly a piastre amongst them, the jewels are tinsel and glass; two of the party are dead already, and two of those left are not worth a handful of date-stones."
"Kismat" (fate), was Tewfik's characteristic reply.
"What shall we do with the tall Feringhee?" inquired the chief, glancing towards the spot where Harold was lying.
"Sell him, if we can get a purchaser. It will be strange if no one in Djauf be in want of a slave."
"But he is white; slaves in Arabia are usually curly-headed blacks from the African coast."
"He'll be a choice rarity then, like a white camel," was the laughing reply. Bedouins are fond of a joke.
"The worth of a camel is certainly not in its colour but in its power of bearing burdens," said the chief.
"The Feringhee has plenty of bone and muscle, and spirit too," observed the Bedouin robber; "I have felt the strength of his arm. I should say that he could lift three maund." *
* A maund is 80 lbs.
"No, he's slight—not two," said the chief.
"He's worth forty tomauns of any one's money," cried Tewfik.
"I say thirty; we'll be lucky if we get them," rejoined the other.
There was a little squabbling over this matter of Harold's price. The voices became louder, the manner of the Arabs more excited, especially hot grew the dispute when the subject was how far Tewfik was entitled to the purchase money of his captive, or whether the coveted tomauns should not be divided amongst the band.
"Son of an ass!" exclaimed the chief angrily. "Three such as you could not have mastered that Feringhee had not we been near to aid!"
"A slave! A price to be given for me—an Englishman! This is the last drop in my bitter, bitter cup!" thought Harold. "Was it for this that I left my country and devoted myself to work for souls? Could I not have been spared such misery, such humiliation as this? But I see before me the footprints of One who drank of a cup yet more bitter, who submitted to degradation yet deeper. It was through anguish that the Master passed to glory, shall the disciple shrink back? But is it cowardice to hope that the misery may be short, that I may in mercy be soon permitted to rejoin my dear lost brother!"
The wrangling amongst the Bedouins ended in compromise; Tewfik was to keep a third of the money paid for his unhappy slave, and the Arab's good temper being restored, he laughingly told the chief that he would freely throw the old woman and her child into the bargain.
"I would not give a lame ass for the two," quoth the chief.