Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/168

126 Married women were sent to prison on all sorts of charges, ranging from suspected conjugal infidelity to the delivery of a curtain lecture. The women prisoners wore light chains connecting their anklets, but their lot was little better than that of the men. A charge of infidelity "not proven," as the Scotch have it, was followed by imprisonment and the application of three hundred stripes with the courbag, and when the woman had recovered from these, she would be sent into the house of one of the gaolers to be the maid-of-all-work for every one there; she would have to grind corn, attend to the children, carry water, and be driven as a slave night and day for weeks. A Mrs. Caudle or a termagant received from fifty to eighty lashes, and she too on recovery would be sent into one of the gaolers' hareems to work as hard as her possibly innocent and more severely punished companion in misery. A few weeks of such treatment sent the women back home completely cured of the faults for which they were sent to prison to be corrected, besides which the relation of their experiences acted as an effective deterrent on budding Mrs. Caudles and others.

The unloading of boats was the hardest work we were set to, and we were kept up to the mark by the ever-present lash; we might only be tired and ill when we could afford the luxury of paying for the complaint, for this labour was the most lucrative task our gaolers could set us to; we had either to work, or pay many times the equivalent of our labour. It was in connection with the unloading of boats, and this,