 | II. Inklings of adventure |  |
2. II.
As we entered the gates of the slave-market, Mustapha
renewed his cautions to me with regard to my conduct,
reminded me that, as a Christian, I should see the
white female slaves at the peril of my life, and immediately
assumed, himself, a sauntering and poco-curante
manner, equally favorable to concealment and to his
interests as a purchaser. I followed close at his heels
with his pipe, and, as he stopped to chat with his acquaintances,
I now and then gave a shove with the bowl
between his jacket and girdle, rendered impatient to the
last degree by the sight of the close lattices on every side
of us, and the sounds of the chattering voices within.
I should have been interested, had I been a mere
spectator, in the scene about me, but Mustapha's unnecessary
and provoking delay, while, (as I thought possible,
be bartered for at that moment within, wound my rage
to a pitch at last scarcely endurable.
We had come up from a cellar to which one of Mustapha's
acquaintances had taken him to see a young
white lad he was about to purchase, and I was hoping
that my suspense was nearly over, when a man came forward
into the middle of the court, ringing a hand-bell,
and followed by a black girl, covered with a scant blanket.
Like most of her race (she was an Abyssinian,) her
head was that of a brute, but never were body and limbs
more exquisitely moulded. She gazed about without
either surprise or shame, stepping after the crier with
an elastic, leopard-like tread, her feet turned in like
those of the North American Indian, her neck bent
gracefully forward, and her shoulders and hips working
with that easy play so lost in the constrained dress and
motion of civilized women. The Mercury of Giovanni
di Bologna springs not lighter from the jet of the fountain
that did this ebon Venus from the ground on which
she stood.
I ventured to whisper to Mustapha, that, under cover
of the sale of the Abyssinian, we might see the white
slaves more unobserved.
A bid was made for her.
“Fifteen piastres!” said the attar-seller, wholly absorbed
in the sale, and not hearing a syllable I said to
him, “She would be worth twice as much to gild my
pastilles!” And handing me his pipe, he waddled into
the centre of the court, lifted the blanket from the slave's
shoulders, turned her round and round, like a Venus
on a pivot, looked at her teeth and hands, and after a
conversation aside with the crier, he resumed his pipe,
and the black disappeared from the ground.
“I have bought her!” he said, with a salacious grin,
Italian execration in his ear.
The idea that Maimuna might have become the
property of that gross and sensual monster just as easily
as the pretty negress he had bought, sent my blood boiling
for an instant to my cheek. Yet I had seen this
poor savage of seventeen sold without a thought, save
mental congratulation that she would be better fed and
clad. What a difference one's private feelings make
in one's sympathies!
I was speculating, in a kind of tranquil despair, on
the luxurious evils of slavery, when Mustapha called to
him an Egyptian, in a hooded blue cloak, whom I remembered
to have seen on board the Trebisondian.
He was a small-featured, black-lipped, willowy Asiatic,
with heavy-lidded eyes, and hands as dry and rusty as
the claws of a harpy. After a little conversation, he
rose from the platform on which he had crossed his
legs, and taking my pro-tempore master by the sleeve,
traversed the quadrangle to a closed door in the best-looking
of the miserable houses that surrounded the
court. I followed close upon his heels with a beating
heart. It seemed to me as if every eye in the crowded
market-place must penetrate my disguise. He knocked,
and answering to some one who spoke from within,
the door was opened, and the next moment I found myself
in the presence of a dozen veiled women, seated in
various attitudes on the floor. At the command of our
conductor, carpets were brought for Mustapha and himself;
and, as they dropped upon their hams, every veil
was removed, and a battery of staring and unwinking
eyes was levelled full upon us.
“Is she here?” said Mustapha to me in Italian, as I
stooped over to hand him his eternal pipe.
“Dio mio! no!”
I felt insulted, that with half a glance at the Circassian
me the question. Yet they were handsome! Red
cheeks, white teeth, black eyes, and youth could scarce
compose a plain woman; and thus much of beauty
seemed equally bestowed on all.
“Has he no more?” I asked, stooping to Mustapha's
ear.
I looked around while he was getting the information
I wanted in his own deliberate way; and, scarce
knowing what I did, applied my eye to a crack in the
wall, through which had been coming for some time a
strong aroma of coffee. I saw at first only a small dim
room, in the midst of which stood a Turkish manghal,
or brazier of coals, sustaining the coffee-pot from which
came the agreeable perfume I had inhaled. As my
eye became accustomed to the light, I could distinguish
a heap of what I took to be shawls lying in the centre
of the floor; and presuming it was the dormitory of one
of the slave-owners, I was about turning my head away,
when the coffee on the manghal suddently boiled over,
and at the same instant started, from the heap at which
I had been gazing, the living form of Maimuna!
“Mustapha!” I cried, starting back, and clasping
my hands before him.
Before I could utter another word, a grasp upon my
ankle, that drew blood with every nail, restored me to
my self-possession. The Circassians began to giggle,
and the wary old Turk, taking no apparent notice of
my agitation, ordered me, in a stern tone, to fill his
pipe, and went on conversing with the Egyptian.
I leaned with an effort at carelessness against the
wall, and looked once more through the crevice. She
stood by the manghal, filling a cup with a small filagree-holder
from the coffee-pot, and by the light of the
fire I could see every feature of her face as distinctly
as daylight. She was alone, and had been sitting
now fallen to her shoulders, drawn over her till it concealed
her feet. A narrow carpet was beneath her,
and as she moved from the fire, a slight noise drew my
attention downward, and I saw that she was chained by
the ankle to the floor. I stooped to the ear of Mustapha,
told him in a whisper of my discovery, and implored
him, for the love of heaven, to get admission
into her apartment.
“Pekhe! pekhe! filio mio!” was the unsatisfactory
answer to my impatience, while the Egyptian rose and
proceeded to turn round, in the light of the window,
the fattest of the fair Circassians, from whom he had
removed every article of dress save her slippers and
trousers.
I returned to the crevice. Maimuna had drunk her
coffee, and stood, with her arms folded, thoughtfully
gazing on the fire. The expression in her beautiful
and youthful face was one I could scarcely read to my
satisfaction. The slight lips were firmly but calmly
compressed, the forehead untroubled, the eye alone
strained, and unnaturally fixed and lowering. I
looked at her with the heart beating like a hammer in
my bosom, and an impatience in my trembling limbs
which it required every consideration of prudence to
suppress. She moved slowly away at last, and sinking
again to her carpet, drew out the chain from beneath
her, and drawing the shawl once more over her
head, lay down, and sunk apparently to sleep.
Mustapha left the Circassian, whose beauties he had
risen to examine more nearly, and came to my side.
“Are you sure that it is she?” he asked, in an almost
inaudible whisper.
“Si!”
He took the pipe from my hand, and requested me,
in the same suppressed voice, to return to his shop.
“And Maimuna”—
His only answer was to point to the door, and thinking
it best to obey his orders implicitly, I made the
best of my way out of the slave-market, and was soon
drinking a sherbet in his inner apartment, and listening
to the shuffle of every passing slipper for the coming
of the light step of the Gipsy.
| II. Inklings of adventure | |