Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/340

 he became the victim of nameless tortures. As he told the tale of the things that he had suffered on the night of his arrest—of the appalling mutilations which had been inflicted upon him, and of the diabolical ingenuity which had been used, amid laughter and brutal jests, to wreck his manhood, and to reduce him to the pitiful ruin he had since become—the white man sat writhing in sympathetic agony, and was assailed by a feeling of horror so violent that it turned him sick and faint.

"Ya Allah!" he cried. "It were better far to die than to endure such excruciating pains, and thereafter to live the life which is no life."

The cripple looked up at him with interest. He had evidently been more accustomed to mockery than to pity.

"That is true," he said. "It is true." Then, a light that was almost insane in its intensity awaking suddenly in his dulled eyes, he added, with something like triumph in his tone, “But for a space Îang Mûnah was mine, my woman to me, and willingly would I endure anew the worst that men can do if for a little I could be what of old I was, and the desire in my heart could once more be satisfied."

The spark of energy and spirit died out of him as quickly as it had been kindled. He seemed to collapse upon himself, and said in a hoarse whisper:

"But now she has again become a jâmah-jâmah-an—a casual concubine of the Sultan—and in that knowledge lurks the keenest of all my agonies."