Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/163

Rh of the thorn zareeba, and later, to obviate the necessity of the prisoners going to the Nile banks for drinking water and ablutions, a well was sunk to provide infiltration water for the purposes mentioned. Until these works were ordered to be made, the prisoners were mainly employed in building mud-brick houses for the gaolers; and when these were finished we had to attend to certain of the household duties — the tending of children, sheep, goats, and the carrying of water from the Nile. Of all the tasks set the prisoners, the household duties were the most pleasant, or, at all events, the least distasteful. Most of the gaolers were able to keep up a large establishment on the proceeds of their baksheesh and ill-gotten gains, but with a multiplicity of wives or concubines a very natural result followed — household bickerings and squabbles, in which one wife or concubine was bound to come off worst; and this gave the wide-awake prisoner engaged upon household duties his chance. He would soon detect which concubine was being "put upon," or whom the women-folk were most jealous of, and in a few days' time, as a result of his attentions in carrying her pots and pans, and bringing her water as many times in the day as she wished, he would be bemoaning in her sympathetic ears the hard