The Abyssinian Slave.
CHAPTER I.
In consequence of the licentiousness and cruelty of Rookn-ood-Deen Feroze, King of Delhi, he was deposed, and his sister Ruzeea Begum raised to the throne. On her elevation great rejoicings prevailed throughout her dominions; and she gave splendid entertainments and public shows for several days, in order to impress the people with an idea of her munificence. She was a woman of masculine understanding, great energy of character, and much was expected from the administration of a sovereign, of whom her royal father had said, not long before his death, when asked by his officers why he appointed his daughter regent of the kingdom during his temporary absence, in preference to his sons,—“My sons give themselves up to wine and every other excess; I think, therefore, the government too weighty for their shoulders; but my daughter Ruzeea Begum, though a woman, has a man’s head and heart, and is better than twenty such sons.”
The last day of the public rejoicings on the Sultana’s accession to the throne of Delhi was distinguished by wild-beast fights and gymnastic sports, in which the most celebrated competitors in her dominions exhibited their skill.
During the games, a wild buffalo, which had been kept without food for two days, in order to render it more savage, was driven into the arena, and a large leopard, suffering under similar abstinence, opposed to it. The conflict was short but decisive. The leopard sprang upon its adversary, which received it upon itshorns, flung it into the air with fatal force, and then finished the work of destruction by goring it until it was dead, without receiving a wound beyond a few superficial scratches. The animal, proud of its victory, pawed the ground in triumph, and roared as if challenging another competitor. It galloped round the enclosure, raising the sand with its hoofs, scattering it in the air, and plunging with all the fury of frantic excitement.
The Queen sat in the balcony of a building erected for the purpose of enabling her to witness the sports without risk. She was surrounded by her women, who appeared to take no common pleasure in the sanguinary pastime. Among them was the daughter of an Omrah, an extremely pretty girl, to whom her mistress was much attached, and who, by way of distinction, sat at her feet on the present occasion. She waved her handkerchief with all the energy of girlish delight as the victorious buffalo was careering round the area, when a champion appeared before the spectators, causing a hush of breathless suspense as he advanced towards the enraged animal, and declared aloud his determination to encounter it. He was a man singularly handsome, with the frame of a Hercules cast in the perfect mould of graceful proportion. He was tall, but robust; broad, but compactly formed; every muscle, for he was naked from his waist upward and from the knees downward, swelling from the surface of his body with an undulation of symmetry that appeared the very perfection of manly beauty. The calm but intense gleam of his eye, which did not for a moment relax, was a legible record, not to be misinterpreted, of his steady drift of purpose and indomitable resolution. His lips were gently compressed, his head was slightly inclined upon the right shoulder, his step was deliberate but firm, and his whole bearing such as could not be mistaken for anything but that of a man of the highest physical endowments. He was armed with a short broad sabre, which he grasped in his right hand, and a heavy-bladed dagger was stuck in his belt.
The buffalo roared as its adversary advanced, pawed the ground, bent its head, and rushed furiously towards the stranger, who leaping on one side with great agility, the infuriated beast continuedits career for several yards. It however soon returned to the charge, and with a celerity which required all the wary caution and cool activity, so eminently possessed by the champion, to avoid. It was again foiled, but it became only the more enraged, and pursued its enemy with such vigour that he had great difficulty to evade the intended mischief. At length, seeing that the danger was heightening as the animal was in full career towards him, he sprang out of its path, and striking forward with his sword, broke off one of its horns close to the head. The wounded beast bellowed with agony, and turned suddenly round upon its adversary, who, evading a contact with the same dexterity as before, struck his dumb antagonist so powerful a blow upon the neck as nearly severed the head, and the buffalo rolled at his feet in the pangs of death. He then coolly bowed to the Sultana, and retired.
“Who is that?” she inquired of an officer who had the direction of the sports.
“An Abyssinian slave, most potent Queen, celebrated alike for the beauty of his person and his prodigious strength of body.”
“His name?”
“Yakoot.”
“To whom does he belong?”
“To the mighty Sultana, whose empire is as extensive as the spiritual dominion of the Prophet.”
“Let him be summoned before me at the conclusion of the sports.”
“What a charming man!” said Bameea, the Queen’s favourite, one of the ladies of her mistress’s court; “and a slave too! Those limbs of his were never formed for manacles, nor that back for a scourge: what think you?”
“That fine limbs and a handsome frame are only outward tokens of beauty, and may conceal more deformity than the greatest monster exhibits to a mere superficial scrutiny. Fruits of the richest colour contain the deadliest poison; and they tell us of some, exquisite to the eye, that yield only ashes.”
“Ah! you are one of those cautious beauties, Zophra, that willtake nothing upon trust. You would look into a diamond to see what it is made of; but I am content with its brilliancy, and seek not to know whether it is a mineral or vegetable, or a houri’s tear. Look at that man again, and say if he is not beautiful in his bondage—if he is a fit object for slavery.”
The Abyssinian had again come forward to exhibit his strength and skill in another encounter of quite a different character from the first. He was now about to wrestle with a gigantic man, dull in aspect and ungainly in his motions, though of colossal dimensions and prodigious muscularity of limb. They stood before each other, and immediately commenced the struggle. The larger competitor seized his adversary by the shoulder with such a vigorous grasp as left the impression of every finger. The Abyssinian soon, however, disengaged himself, and laying hold of his opponent by the waistband of his trousers, threw him forward with astounding force upon his face. The fallen champion rose actively to his feet, and with a flushed countenance again placed his hand upon the shoulder of his opponent, and, striking him at the same moment just below the knee, cast him to the earth; but as he fell upon his side the victory was not obtained, it being necessary that the vanquished man should be thrown upon his back.
The slave rose deliberately, with a faint smile upon his lip, but a defiant expression in his eye, that told, more intelligibly than words could utter, a resolution to show what he could do under the apparent disadvantages of superior strength and stature. He advanced slowly towards his huge competitor, stood before him in an erect position, his left arm extended and his right close to his breast, watching with the eye of a lynx an opportunity for making his favourite movement. The colossal champion walked round him, every now and then striking his hands upon his own body, producing a sharp, loud smack, and adopting various evolutions to distract the attention of him to whom he was opposed. At length, with the swiftness of thought, the Abyssinian darted upon his adversary and hit him with his open hand upon the throat, at the same instant striking his feet from under him with a force which nothing could resist. The man fell upon his back with so terrifica shock, that he was borne senseless from the enclosure. The victor, with modest gravity, again made his obeisance to the Sultana and retired.
The lovely Bameea was perfectly delighted with the slave Yakoot, and began to feel more than a woman’s curiosity to know something of his history. She was anxious to persuade herself that he could not be an ordinary person; and although Abyssinians were at the best little better than barbarians, yet was it certain that there were always exceptions to every general rule, and Bameea felt quite satisfied that Yakoot was one of those exceptions. Besides, she had remarked the countenance of her royal mistress as the latter regarded the two last encounters, and she observed an expression of satisfaction which confirmed her in the conclusion she had come to in the slave’s favour; for she could not a moment entertain the thought that Sultana Ruzeea Begum would condescend, even by the faintest expression of her illustrious features, to indicate a favourable impression of any man who was not worthy to be admired by all the ladies of her court.
The concluding feat of the day was a conflict with wooden swords between the Abyssinian slave and an Indian, a Catti Rajpoot, who had been taken prisoner in a late invasion of some of the provinces of Hindostan. The Catti, as all his race are, was considered pre-eminently skilled in the use of the sword. The wooden weapons with which the combatants stood armed were made of a heavy wood and were long and broad.
The onset was commenced by the Catti, who displayed a skill and activity which at first somewhat confounded the slave, the latter doing as much as he could in parrying the strokes of his adversary without attempting to make a return. The vigour, however, of the Catti, gradually abated; and finding that his blows were so successfully parried, and that he was wasting his energies to no purpose, he began to be more wary. The Abyssinian now occasionally became the assaulter, but his efforts to hit the Rajpoot were foiled with equal skill.
Each of the champions had received slight blows, and appeared to be so equally matched, that it was difficult to decide which hadthe advantage. The Catti at length grew impatient and lost his caution. His attack was more impetuous and reckless. In proportion as he became heated the slave was cool; and taking advantage of his opponent’s precipitation, just as the latter had raised his arm to strike, Yakoot hit him suddenly above the elbow with such force that the bone of his arm instantly snapped, the fractured member dropped powerless by his side, and the wooden sword fell from his relaxed grasp.
This concluded the sports. The Rajpoot walked from the arena in sullen disappointment, whilst the victor was borne in triumph upon the shoulders of four men in a car, decorated with flowers. The Queen quitted the balcony, and the gentle Bameea thought more ardently than ever that the slave was in every respect a marvellous man.