Chapter 74 - The Boy Slaves by Mayne Reid
EN ROUTE
And now away for the Moorish frontier.
Away,—trusting that the last hasty promise of the merchant to test their earnest story, and yield to the importunate desires which they had so long cherished, might not be unfulfilled.
Away,—out into the desert again; into that broad, barren wilderness of sand, stretching wearily on as far as eye could reach, and beyond the utmost limit of human steps, where the wild beasts almost fear to tread.
Away,—under the glare of the tropic sun, whose torrid beams fall from heavens that glow like hot walls of brass, and beat down through an atmosphere whose faint undulations in the breath of the desert wind ebb and flow over the parched travellers, like waves of a fiery sea; under a sun that seems to grow ever larger and brighter as the tired eyes, sick with beholding its yellow splendor overflowing all the world, yet turn toward it their fascinated gaze, and faint into burning dryness at its sight.
Away,—from the coolness of city walls, and the dark shadows of narrow, high-built streets, where the sunlight comes only at the height of noon, where men hide within doors as the hot hours draw nigh, and rest in silent chambers, or drowse away the time with tchibouque or narghileh, whose softened odor of the rich Eastern tobacco floats up through perfumed waters and tubes of aromatic woods to leisurely lips, and curls in dim wreaths before restful eyelids half dropping to repose.
Away,—from the association of men in street, lane, bazaar, and market-place. No very profitable or happy association for the poor captives, one might think; and yet not so. For in every group of bystanders, or bevy of passers, they perchance might see him who should prove their angel of deliverance,—a kindly merchant, a new speculator, or even, by some event of gracious fortune, a countryman or a friend.
Away,—from all that they had borne and hoped, and borne and seen and suffered, into the desert whose paths lay invisible to them, mapped out in the keen intellects of their guides and guards, who read the streaming sand of Saära as sailors read the wilds of sweeping seas, but whose dusky faces, as inscrutable as the barren wastes, revealed no trace of the secret of the path they led,—whether indeed the great Moorish Empire were their destination, or whether they turned their steps to some unknown and untried goal.
Away,—from the hum of business, from the gossip of idlers and the staid speech of a city into the silence of the vast desolation wherein they moved, the only reasoning, thinking beings it contained. Silence all around, unbroken save by the smothered tread of the beasts in their little train, the shouts of the drivers, the chattering of the attendants, the rattling of harness and burdens, and the soft sough of the sand as it sank back into the hot level from which the passing hoofs had disturbed it.
Away, away,—and who shall attempt to paint the feelings of the captives as their wanderings began again? It would need a brilliant pen to convey the sensations with which the voyageur, eager for scenes of adventure and fresh from the hived-up haunts of civilization, would enter upon a desert jaunt, to whom all was full of novelty and interest, whose companions were subjects for curious study, speaking in accents the unfamiliar Oriental cadence of which fell pleasantly upon his ear, and who found in every hour some fresh cause for wonder or pleasure. But a pen of marvellous power and pathos must be invoked to portray the mingled emotions that swayed in swift succession the minds of our Boy Slaves! No charm existed for them in the strangeness of desert scenery, Arab comradeship, and the murmur of Eastern tongues; they had long passed the time for that, while their bitter familiarity with all these made even a deep revulsion of feeling in their sorely tried souls. Hope, fear, doubt, fatigue, anxious yearning, and vague despair,—all in turn swept through their thoughts, even as the dust of their pitiless pathway swept over their scorched faces, and covered with effacing monotony every vestige of their passage. Mine is no such potent pen, and so let us leave them, bound to their beasts of burden, going down from the abodes of men into the depths again; and so let us leave them, journeying ever onward,—away, away!