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 act as they did. Their hardness of heart came not from God, but the Prophet. They were only carrying out the edicts of their "priests of a bloody faith." In vain did the old man-o'-war's-man cry out "belay" and "avast". In vain did he "shiver his timbers", and appeal against their scurvy treatment by looks, words, and gesture. These seemed only to augment the mirth and spitefulness of his tormentors.