Page:Ballantyne--The Pirate City.djvu/379

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THE PIRATE CITY.
357

who felt inclined to talk as he began to enjoy himself. "If it wasn't so dirty that an Irish pig of proper breedin' would object to come into it, I'd say it was raither agreeable."

Rais Ali being in the height of enjoyment, declined to answer, but the seaman's active mind was soon furnished with food for contemplation, when one of the attendants entered and quietly began, to all appearance, to put the tall thin Moor to the torture.

"Have I to go through that?" thought Flaggan; "well, well, niver say die, owld boy, it's wan comfort that I'm biggish, an' uncommon tough."

It would be tedious to prolong the description of the Irishman's bathe that morning. Suffice it to say that, after he had lain on the ottoman long enough to feel as if the greater part of him had melted away, he awoke his attendant, who led him into a corner, laid him on the sloppy floor, and subjected him to a series of surprises. He first laid Ted's head on his naked thigh, and rubbed his face and neck tenderly, as though he had been an only son; he then straightened his limbs and baked them as though he had been trained to knead men into loaves from infancy; after that he turned him on his back and on his face; punched and pinched and twisted him; he drenched him with hot water, and soused him with soap-suds from head to foot, face and all, until the stout mariner resembled a huge mass of his