Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/168

 air once more, would see once again the sky arching above him, would hear the murmur of running water, the sighing of the wind through the fruit trees and its stir among the fronds—would be quit for a space of the horrors and the putrefaction of his surroundings, and would see, smell, hear, and enjoy all the sights, scents, sounds, and familiar things for which he hungered with so sick a longing.

Accordingly, the chief having been communicated with, he was one day taken upriver to the place he had named; but the reek of the cage clung to him, and the fresh air was to him made foul by it. The search was fruitless, of course; he was beaten by the boatmen, who had had their trouble for nothing; and, sore and bleeding, he was placed once more in his cage, with the added pain of heavy chains to complete his sufferings. An iron collar was riveted about his neck, and attached by ponderous links to chains passed about his waist and to rings around his ankles. The fetters galled him, preventing him from lying at ease in any attitude, and they speedily doubled the number of his bed-sores. The noisy, bloated flies buzzed around him now in ever-increasing numbers, feasting horribly upon his rottenness, as he sat all day sunken in stupid, wide-eyed despair.

A Chinese lunatic had been placed in the vacant cage on his left—a poor mindless wretch who cried out to all who visited the prison that he had become a Muhammadan, vainly hoping thereby to meet with some small measure of pity from the worshippers of Allah, the merciful and compassionate God. The