Blue Lights: Hot Work in the Soudan Part 37

Again he looked on either side of him, for hope was strongly enshrined in his broad bosom, but not a friendly or even pitiful face could he see among all the hundreds that surrounded him.

Arrived at the place, he glanced up at the beam over his head, and for one moment thought of trying, like Samson, to burst the bonds that held him; but it was only for a moment. The impossibility of freeing himself was too obvious. He meekly bowed his head. Another instant and the rope tightened round his neck, and he felt himself swinging in the air.

Before his senses had quite left him, however, he felt his feet again touch the ground. The choking sensation pa.s.sed away, and he found himself supported by two men. A burst of mocking laughter then proved to the wretched man that his tormentors had practised on him the refined cruelty of half-hanging him. If he had had any doubt on this subject, the remark of the interpreter, as he afterwards left him in his cell to recover as best he might, would have dispelled it--

"We will 'ang you _dead_ de nex' time!"

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

CRUEL TREATMENT--DESPAIR FOLLOWED BY HOPE AND A JOYFUL DISCOVERY.

After the rough treatment he had received, the Mahdi, as we may well believe, did not feel more amiably disposed towards his prisoners.

Of course he had no reason for blaming Miles for what had occurred, nevertheless he vented his wrath against white men in general on him, by keeping him constantly on the move, and enforcing prolonged and unusual speed while running, besides subjecting him publicly to many insults.

It was a strange school in which to learn self-restraint and humility.

But our hero profited by the schooling. Necessity is a stern teacher, and she was the head-mistress of that school. Among other things she taught Miles to reason extensively--not very profoundly, perhaps, nor always correctly, but at all events in a way that he never reasoned before. The best way to convey to the reader the state of his mind will be to let him speak for himself. As he had a habit of thinking aloud-- for sociability, as it were--in the dark cell to which he had been relegated, we have only to bend down our ear and listen.

One night, about a week after the overthrow of his tyrant master, Miles was seated on the hard floor of his cell, leaning against the wall, with his knees drawn up and his face in his hands--his usual att.i.tude when engaged in meditation after a hard day's work.

"I wouldn't mind so much," he murmured, "if I only saw the faintest prospect of its coming to an end, but to go on thus from day to day, perhaps year to year, is terrible. No, that cannot be; if we cannot escape it won't be long till the end comes. (A pause.) The end!--the end of a rope with a noose on it is likely to be _my_ end, unless I burst up and run a-muck. No, no, Miles Milton, don't you think of that!

What good would it do to kill half-a-dozen Arabs to accompany you into the next world? The poor wretches are only defending their country after all. (Another pause.) Besides, you deserve what you've got for so meanly forsaking your poor mother; think o' that, Miles, when you feel tempted to stick your lance into the Mahdi's gizzard, as Molloy would have said. Ah! poor Molloy! I fear that I shall never see you again in this life. After giving the Mahdi and his steed such a tremendous heave they would be sure to kill you; perhaps they tortured you to--"

He stopped at this point with an involuntary shudder.

"I hope not," he resumed, after another pause. "I hope we may yet meet and devise some means of escape. G.o.d grant it! True, the desert is vast and scorching and almost waterless--I may as well say foodless too!

And it swarms with foes, but what then? Have not most of the great deeds of earth, been accomplished in the face of what seemed insurmountable difficulties? Besides--"

He paused again here, and for a longer time, because there came suddenly into his mind words that had been spoken to him long ago by his mother: "With G.o.d _all things_ are possible."

"Yes, Miles," he continued, "you must make up your mind to restrain your anger and indignation, because it is useless to give vent to them.

That's but a low motive after all. Is it worthy of an intelligent man?

I get a slap in the face, and bear it patiently, because I can't help myself. I get the same slap in the face in circ.u.mstances where I _can_ help myself, and I resent it fiercely. Humble when I _must_ be so; fierce when I've got the power. Is not this unmanly--childish--humbug?

There is no principle here. Principle! I do believe I never had any principle in me worthy of the name. I have been drifting, up to this time, before the winds of caprice and selfish inclination. (A long pause here.) Well, it just comes to this, that whatever happens I must submit with a good grace--at least, as good grace as I can--and hope that an opportunity to escape may occur before long. I have made up my mind to do it--and when I once make up my mind, I--"

He paused once more at this point, and the pause was so long that he turned it into a full stop by laying his head on the block of wood which formed his pillow and going to sleep.

It will be seen from the above candid remarks that our hero was not quite as confident of his power of will as he used to be,--also, that he was learning a few useful facts in the school of adversity.

One evening, after a harder day than usual, Miles was conducted to the prison in which he and his companions had been confined on the day of their arrival.

Looking round the cell, he observed, on becoming accustomed to the dim light, that only one other prisoner was there. He was lying on the bare ground in a corner, coiled up like a dog, and with his face to the wall.

Relieved to find that he was not to be altogether alone, Miles sat down with his back against the opposite wall, and awaited the waking of his companion with some interest, for although his face was not visible, and his body was clothed in a sort of sacking, his neck and lower limbs showed that he was a white man. But the sleeper did not seem inclined to waken just then. On the contrary, he began, ere long, to snore heavily.

Miles gradually fell into a train of thought that seemed to bring back reminiscences of a vague, indefinable sort. Then he suddenly became aware that the snore of the snorer was not unfamiliar. He was on the point of rising to investigate this when the sleeper awoke with a start, sat bolt upright with a look of owlish gravity, and presented the features of Jack Molloy.

"Miles, my lad!" cried Jack, springing up to greet his friend warmly, "I thought you was dead."

"And, Jack, my dear friend," returned Miles, "I thought--at least I feared--that you must have been tortured to death."

"An' you wasn't far wrong, my boy. Stand close to me, and look me straight in the eyes. D'ee think I'm any taller?"

"Not much--at least, not to my perception. Why?"

"I wonder at that, now," said Molloy, "for I've bin hanged three times, an' should have bin pulled out a bit by this time, considering my weight."

His friend smiled incredulously.

"You may laugh, lad, but it's no laughin' matter," said Molloy, feeling his neck tenderly. "The last time, I really thought it was all up wi'

me, for the knot somehow got agin my windpipe an' I was all but choked.

If they had kep' me up half a minute longer it would have bin all over: I a'most wished they had, for though I never was much troubled wi' the narves, I'm beginnin' now to have a little fellow-feelin' for the sufferin's o' the narvish."

"Do you really mean, my dear fellow, that the monsters have been torturing you in this way?" asked Miles, with looks of sympathy.

"Ay, John Miles, that's just what I does mean," returned the seaman, with an anxious and startled look at the door, on the other side of which a slight noise was heard at the moment. "They've half-hanged me three times already. The last time was only yesterday, an' at any moment they may come to give me another turn. It's the uncertainty o'

the thing that tries my narves. I used to boast that I hadn't got none once, but the Arabs know how to take the boastin' out of a fellow. If they'd only take me out to be hanged right off an' done with it, I wouldn't mind it so much, but it's the constant tenter-hooks of uncertainty that floors me. Hows'ever, I ain't quite floored yet. But let's hear about yourself, Miles. Come, sit down. I gets tired sooner than I used to do since they took to hangin' me. How have they bin sarvin' you out since I last saw ye?"

"Not near so badly as they have been serving you, old boy," said Miles, as he sat down and began to detail his own experiences.

"But tell me," he added, "have you heard anything of our unfortunate comrades since we parted?"

"Nothing--at least nothing that I can trust to. I did hear that poor Moses Pyne is dead; that they had treated him the same as me, and that his narves couldn't stand it; that he broke down under the strain an'

died. But I don't believe it. Not that these Arabs wouldn't kill him that way, but the interpreter who told me has got falsehood so plainly writ in his ugly face that I would fain hope our kind-hearted friend is yet alive."

"G.o.d grant it may be so!" said Miles fervently. "And I scarcely think that even the cruellest of men would persevere in torturing such a gentle fellow as Moses."

"May-hap you're right," returned Molloy; "anyhow, we'll take what comfort we can out o' the hope. Talkin' o' comfort, what d'ee think has bin comfortin' me in a most wonderful way? You'll never guess."

"What is it, then?"

"One o' them little books as Miss Robinson writes, and gives to soldiers and sailors--`The Victory' it's called, havin' a good deal in it about Nelson's flagship and Nelson himself; but there's a deal more than that in it--words that has gone straight to my heart, and made me see G.o.d's love in Christ as I never saw it before. Our comrade Stevenson gave it to me before we was nabbed by the Arabs, an' I've kep' it in the linin'

o' my straw hat ever since. You see it's a thin little thing--though there's oceans o' truth in it--an' it's easy stowed away.

"I forgot all about it till I was left alone in this place, and then I got it out, an' G.o.d in his marcy made it like a light in the dark to me.

"Stevenson came by it in a strange way. He told me he was goin' over a battle-field after a scrimmage near Suakim, lookin' out for the wounded, when he noticed somethin' clasped in a dead man's hand. The hand gripped it tight, as if unwillin' to part with it, an' when Stevenson got it he found that it was this little book, `The Victory.' Here it is. I wouldn't change it for a golden sov, to every page."

As he spoke, footsteps were heard approaching the door. With a startled air Molloy thrust the book into its place and sprang up.

"See there, now!" he said remonstratively, "who'd ever ha' thowt that I'd come to jerk about like that?"

Before the door opened, however, the momentary weakness had pa.s.sed away, and our seaman stood upright, with stern brow and compressed lips, presenting to those who entered as firm and self-possessed a man of courage as one could wish to see.

"I knowed it!" he said in a quiet voice to his friend, as two strong armed men advanced and seized him, while two with drawn swords stood behind him. At the same time, two others stood guard over Miles.

"They're goin' to give me another turn. G.o.d grant that it may be the last!"

"Yes--de last. You be surely dead dis time," said the interpreter, with a malignant smile.