ribable were
his emotions, that he lay like one stunned.

While the boy lay fainting in the hot sun amid the dead and the blood,
the chief of the party in charge of the prisoners, casting his eyes
around, saw a whip of hippopotamus-hide in the waist-cloth of one of the
dead fundis, or overseers, of the Arabs. This pliant and formidable
whip the chief--a man of stern and forbidding aspect, whose name was
Tifum (pronounced Tee-foom),--Tifum Byah, or the "Wicked Tifum," and who
was evidently a traveller--handled like a man who knew its uses, for he
made it fly about his arm in black circles, and made it hiss its menace
in the ears of the sorely-tried Selim.

"Proud Arab boy, arise! Tifum Byah speaks but once, else you will feel
the pains of this whip, with which your cursed race torture the backs of
your slaves. Many days lie between here and Ututa, and you will suffer
more than this ere you see our plains. Arise! No? then words are light
as air, and seldom go into the ears of the stubborn;" and as he spoke,
he lashed the prostrate youth with all his might, while the shrieks
which the pain elicited at last from him were responded to by the
mocking laughter of the brutal crowd, who pointed at the marks which the
whip made in high glee.

When Tifum fancied he had punished him enough, he ordered the boy to be
assisted up to his feet and bound; and when this was done Tifum lowered
his face to Selim's, and said, "Mark my words, child of the pale race!
You shall be Tifum's slave, to hoe his field and bring him wood and
water. You shall nurse his children, be a herdsman of his cattle, and I
will break your heart, and make your ears open to his slightest breath.
Do you hear me, white face?"

So strong was the nauseous and hateful repugnance he felt towards this
man that Selim could not repress the expression of the loathing that
filled him, and almost unconsciously he spat in his face, which was
instantly retaliated by Tifum with a tremendous box on the ear, which
prostrated the boy once more across the dead body of Amer, where he lay
like one deprived of life, and not all the brutal lashing which the
almost lifeless form received evoked one groan from him; and it was in
this unconscious state that he was carried to where the other prisoners
stood huddled together like frightened sheep.

Then, directing his attention to the dead bodies of the Arabs, these
were ordered to be denuded of their clothing, and to be laid in a