Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/173

Rh subjected to the two hundred lashes he was sentenced to receive, and then sent as a prisoner in chains to work at the very same boats, which he had had me flogged for refusing to assist in unloading. This, at the present moment, is the only bit of real justice I can remember during my twelve years' captivity.

I have in a former chapter given a slight description of flogging as I saw it practised when first captured by the dervishes; but the flogging in the Saier was a very different matter. The maximum number of stripes ever ordered was a thousand, and this number was often actually given, but in every case the stripes were given over the clothing. The rules of flogging were generally as follows: the first two hundred on the back below the region of the lumbar vertebræ, the third and fourth hundred on the shoulders, and the fifth hundred on the breast. When the maximum number of one thousand lashes was ordered, they were always given on the same parts as those of the first two hundred, and this punishment was resorted to for the purpose of extorting confessions. After eighty or one hundred blows, the jibbeh was cut into shreds, and soon became saturated with the blood of the victim; and while the effect of the individual blows may not have been as great as those from the cat-o'-nine-tails, the number given made up in quantity for what might have been lacking in quality, as is evidenced by the large numbers who died under the castigation or as a result of it later.

On one occasion an old black soldier of the Egyptian