dge of his own necessities, and of what the women ought to
have done, than what they were likely to do. Old Bill had heard too
much of the character of these hags of the Saara, and their mode of
conducting themselves towards any unfortunate castaway who might be
drifted among them, to expect any great hospitality at their hands.

His hopes, therefore, were moderate; but, for all that, they were doomed
to disappointment.

Perhaps in no other part of the world is the "milk of human kindness" so
completely wanting in the female breast as among the women of the
wandering Arabs of Africa. Slaves to their imperious lords, even when
enjoying the sacred title of wife, they are themselves treated worse
than the animals which they have to manage and tend, even worse at times
than their own bond-slaves, with whom they mingle almost on an equality.
As in all like cases, this harsh usage, instead of producing sympathy
for others who suffer, has the very opposite tendency; as if they found
some alleviation of their cruel lot in imitating the brutality of their
oppressors.

Instead of receiving kindness, the old sailor became the recipient of
insults; not only from their tongues, which he could not understand, but
by acts and gestures which were perfectly comprehensible to him.

While his ears were dinned by virulent speeches which, could he have
comprehended them, would have told him how much he was despised for
being an infidel, and not a follower of the true Prophet; while his eyes
were well-nigh put out by dust thrown in his face, accompanied by
spiteful expectorations, his body was belaboured by sticks, his skin
scratched and pricked with sharp thorns, his whiskers lugged almost to
the dislocation of his jaws, and the hair of his head uprooted in
fistfuls from his pericranium.

All this, too, amid screams and fiendish laughter that resembled an
orgie of furies.

These women--she-devils they better deserved to be called--were simply
following out the teachings of their inhuman faith among religions, even
that of Rome not excepted, the most inhuman that has ever cursed
mankind. Had Old Bill been a believer in their "Prophet," that false
seer of the blood-stained sword, their treatment of him would have been
directly the reverse. Instead of kicks and cuffs, hustlings and
scratchings, he would have been made welcome to a share in such
hospitality as they could have bestowed upon him. It was religion, not
nature, made them