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His recovery, despite the unremitting attention of his nurse, was somewhat slow; the frightful mauling he had received from the cruel kourbash had done its work well, but at last his terrible lacerations began to heal.
Did it never seem to you that the work which you did with me was a good work the reduction of the corvee, the decrease of conscription, the lessening of taxes of the fellah, the bridges built, the canals dug, the seed distributed, the plague stayed, the better dwellings for the poor in the Delta, the destruction of brigandage, the slow blotting-out of exaction and tyranny under the kourbash, the quiet growth of law and justice, the new industries started did not all these seem good to you, as you served the land with me, your great genius for finance, ay, and your own purse, helping on the things that were dear to me, for Egypt's sake?
Did it never seem to you that the work which you did with me was a good work the reduction of the corvee, the decrease of conscription, the lessening of taxes of the fellah, the bridges built, the canals dug, the seed distributed, the plague stayed, the better dwellings for the poor in the Delta, the destruction of brigandage, the slow blotting-out of exaction and tyranny under the kourbash, the quiet growth of law and justice, the new industries started did not all these seem good to you, as you served the land with me, your great genius for finance, ay, and your own purse, helping on the things that were dear to me, for Egypt's sake?
The only acute differences they had were upon two points the cleaning of the medicine bottles and surgical instruments, and the looting. But it was wonderful to see how Mahommed Seti took the kourbash at the hands of Fielding, when he shied from the medicine bottles. He could have broken, or bent double with one twist, the weedy, thin-chested Fielding.
He remembered the last time he had used it in the desert: two days of forgetfulness to the world, when it all moved by him, the swarming Arabs, the train of camels, the loads of ivory, the slimy crocodile on the sandbanks, the vultures hovering above unburied carcasses, the kourbash descending on shining black shoulders, corrugating bare brown bodies into cloven skin and lacerated flesh, a fight between champions of two tribes who clasped and smote and struggled and rained blows, and, both mortally wounded, still writhed in last conflict upon the ground and Mahommed Hassan ever at the tent door or by his side, towering, watchful, sullen to all faces without, smiling to his own, with dog-like look waiting for any motion of his hand or any word.... Ah, Mahommed Hassan, it was he!
"How can I tell you that I don't know," replied Helmar irritably. The last words were scarcely out his mouth when the kourbash again fell with terrific force on his flesh, this time twice in rapid succession. The pain was intense, and as each blow fell George hollowed his back involuntarily as if by doing so he would lessen the force of the dreaded thong.
When the Saadat was in England there was a bad time in Egypt. I was in Cairo; I know. It was the same bad old game the corvee, the kourbash, conscription, a war manufactured to fill the pockets of a few, while the poor starved and died. It didn't come off, because the Saadat wasn't gone long enough, and he stopped it when he came back.
Because of it, Abdalla's command to the crowd to leave had been easier of acceptance. Their hunger had made them dangerous. Danger was in the air. The tax-gatherers had lately gone their rounds, and the agents of the Mouffetish had wielded the kourbash without mercy and to some purpose.
I've been everything, anything, to that swine, Selamlik Pasha; but when he told me yesterday to bring him the daughter of the Arab he killed with his kourbash, I jibbed. I couldn't stand that. Her father had fed me more than once. I jibbed by God, I jibbed! I said I was an Englishman, and I'd see him damned first. I said it, and I shot the horse, and I'd have shot him what's that?"
This done, his hands and feet were fastened, and he was then thrown on the floor face downwards, while the bigger of his two custodians stood by, handling the deadly kourbash. There was no mistaking their vile intentions; he was to be interrogated with a vengeance, and George eyed the cruel thong as it lay idly resting on the ground beside the great Arab.
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