Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/165

 food by one of the chief's slaves, and it was from him that I learned the plot that had undone me. I thirst, I thirst. Have you no water, little brother? After I had divorced her the rice did not come any more. I want water. My mouth is hard and rough as the skin of a skate, and it is dry as the fish that has been smoked above the fire. Have you no water? Ya Allah! Maimûnah, heart of my heart, fruit of my eyes! Water, I pray you. Water. Water. O mother! O mother! O mother of mine! Water, mother! I die I die  mother "

His voice trailed away into inarticulate moanings, and in an hour he was dead.

Next day his body was carried out for burial, and for a time his cage remained untenanted.

On Talib's right a man was confined who was so haggard, meagre, filthy, diseased, and brutal in his habits that it was difficult to believe that he was altogether human, His hair fell in long, tangled, matted, vermin-infested shocks, almost to his waist. His eyes—two smouldering pits of flame—were sunken deep into his yellow parchment-like face. His cheekbones were so prominent that the sharp edges seemed about to cut their way through the skin, and his brows jutted forward like the bosses on the forehead of a fighting ram. The dirt of ages festered in the innumerable wrinkles and creases of his body; and he hardly moved, save to scratch himself fiercely, much as a monkey tears at his flea-infested hide. A small ration of rice and fish was brought to him daily