"It's my silver watch, wrapped in oilskin." "Does it keep good time?" "It loses only a minute in twenty-four hours."
"Hand it over, for you'll not need to count minutes where you're going—you'll not even need a calendar to count years, perhaps thirty of 'em, before your bones are dry instead of wet.' He paused, relishing some secret meaning that was meant to make me quail, but my face was turning into stone, and he talked on. "I'll keep the turnip as a souvenir."
"May I keep the thong?" I asked. "It's only horsehair with brass ends, and I've a sentimental attachment to it."
"Certainly, and I trust 'twill be a comfort to you, for I'm a man of sentiment myself."
It would not be my only comfort. Another was my youth, whereby I need not count years as a spendthrift counts a last handful of coins in his purse. And as I careened into darkness, I found strange solace in the limitless range and sweep of human fate. Fate that had brought me to this pass could bring me to any other within the bourn of man.
The effort made to conceal the arrival of three American prisoners at Tripoli boded us no good. Irons were welded on us before we left the ship—mine the heaviest in the armory; but I did not complain at that, because thus the chains running from wrists to ankles were extra long, giving me full leg and arm room. Turkish rags of dress concealed our white skins. Then we were brought on one of the Ayesha's boats to a deserted wharf far from the busy docks we had seen from the ship, and bundled into a kind of goblin dress, with eye and nose holes, used by women in extreme purdah when forced to go abroad. Hustled into a donkey cart, we jolted over cobblestones, then along a shingled beach. Half-suffocated, we were hauled out at last and put on baggage camels. When dawn broke, we were on a desert of pale brown sand, limitless in every direction except north. That way we could see the distant sheen of the Mediterranean coast, the green of the oasis, and a cluster of white specks marking the town.
Thus began a two-day journey toward some high rugged hills that our Tripolitan camel tenders called the Jebel. Long before we arrived, we knew the first agonies of thirst—our ration of water was hardly half our guards', and our bodies were not yet inured to the burning sands and sky—and the sharp pain and soul shock of the lash laid across our backs. We came at last to a small but green oasis at the foot of a bleak wadi. There were several wells, a large grove of date palms native to the desert, and sick coconut palms imported from the steamy coasts; and in the shade stood one imposing house with a tiled roof and several huts of baked mud roofed with split palm trunks under packed earth. Here, we were to learn, dwelt the quarry master, Sidi el Akir, and the foremen and guards. Up the hill in the glaring sunlight rose a palisade of tree trunks, each topped by a wooden spike hardened in fire. This structure, about a hundred feet square, was the life-long home of about a hundred quarry slaves, their number now increased by three.
These were work hours, so the gate was open and the pen seemed deserted. An off-duty guard who had seen the approach of our little caravan spoke to our captain, made entries in a leather-bound book, and led Sparrow, Jim, and me around one end of the stockade, where an iron hook, about six feet long, jutted out from the wall. He pointed to it, and snarling like a dog, told us something in Arabic. When we were brought inside, I saw a gaunt form of a man lying on a black cloth. It was naked except for a few rags; the pale color and scant beard of the face turned toward the burning-glass sky suggested that he was an Arab. The enclosure contained nothing else but a hole dug in the sand for a latrine, a water trough made from a hollowed tree trunk, a much larger wash trough that could be emptied into a sluice under the wall, and about a hundred rolls of cloth scattered a few feet apart, no doubt similar to the woolen robe, called aba, that comprised the Arab's bed.
Such robes were tossed to us three newcomers. Also, since we had not tasted food since the night before, we were given a handful of dates and allowed to drink from the trough. The guard now walked to the still form by the wall, gazed at it fixedly, and then bent to touch its eyelid. At once he turned, snapping his fingers, and beckoned to Jim and me. We came, our chains rattling.
"Muerto," he said—quite companionably for one so exalted—pointing at the form. Then he told us in sign language what we could do.
It was only to drag the corpse about a cable's length up the hill and leave him there. I thought to pretend to misunderstand and heave it on my shoulder—in respect to the human being it once lodged—but the danger of plague and some half-glimpsed necessity of living long caused me to do precisely what my lord commanded—to take hold of one bare foot while Jim gripped the other and drag the body to the appointed place. As we came near, a flock of hideous vultures hopped along the ground and took to heavy flight. They had feasted richly only a few days before, we thought from the signs. Now their table was spread again.
"Ye reckon we did wrong not to play Ezra Owens's game 'at day we went overside?" Jim asked me, his eyes wheeling slowly to mine.
"We did more right than we knew," I answered.
By now the sun of molten brass had pitched and set; with the failing light the arid air turned chill, and the gathering dusk gave out metallic sounds in cadence. As they loudened slowly, I recognized them as the heavy rattle of many chains of men walking in step. Peering through a crack in the palisade, I saw bobbing torches. The rhythmic noise frightened me more than any experience of my slavery so far—I did not know why—and vibrated the bones of my head before the gate opened and the long file of dust-encrusted human forms trudged through.
All were naked except for loincloths, proof that none were Mohammedans. As they washed in squads of eight, the torchlight glistened on a rapidly increasing number of ebony black or dark brown skins. These were not all Africans: a few with long hair and bearded faces I took to be Indians, quite possibly lascars captured at sea. Several more were pale brown or brunette Levantines of various sorts, Armenians, Cilicians, and Maltese; and at least six were either Circassians or Western Europeans. But only one of the latter—a powerfully built man with reddish hair, big features, and a devil-may-care expression, quite possibly a black-sheep member of a respectable Irish family—gave me a second glance.
After the washing, two Negroes gave each man a palm leaf on which was scooped black beans and several flaps of unleavened bread. The men ate rapidly, licked the palm leaves, and threw them into the latrine. Then all but a few immediately spread their woolen abas and lay down.
The man who had noticed me sauntered to my place and crouched on the sand beside me.
"I'm an Irish gentleman known here as Kerry," he told me in the warm and winning voice of his kind. "Who are you?"
"I'm known here as Sittash."
"That means sixteen, and evidently you've learned a lesson or two already, and mean to get along the best you can."
"Yes, sir, I do."
"I'm glad of that, and I'll tell you why. My teammate, a Salib— they're Christian Semites—began to break up a few days ago; this morning they couldn't whip him to his feet, and since he's not in sight, I assume he's been dragged to the Hill of Mercy to feed the birdies. Well, it stands to reason you'll be put in his place. The little larrikin who came with you hasn't long enough reach to cleave stone with me, and the black will probably get a shade lighter duty, for our job foreman is a black Mohammedan from the Sudan who favors his own color. A teammate who can't face the facts could make me a great deal of trouble—slow down my output, get me a lot of whippings along with his own, I'd arrange for a bad accident to happen to a man like that."