Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2013 01:48:22 +0100 From: Ben Hur Subject: The Unique Experience Part IV There I stood, next to the bench, chained as a galleyslave. With horror I looked at the thick fetter encircling my right ankle, and at both very heavy chains with their very big links that connected the fetter to the manacles around my wrist. At the outside of the fetter swung the big empty ring that led to nowhere, the purpose of which I didn't yet understand. The longer I stood there, the more I became aware of the immense weight of my new set of slave irons, tugging on my limbs. Only one out of four of them was still unchained (and would remain so), but if you may think that this would heighten my chance to escape - as of course I hadn't accepted becoming a slave at that moment already, so the idea of escape as such was still somewhere pricking my mind - I have to disappoint you: no way. If I tried to run, with one foot shackled to my hands, I would entangle myself rather quickly in the unhandy connecting chains, which moreover would jerk both my wrists and especially my very vulnerable ankle the whole time in a very painful way: there is not much flesh around your bones over there, so you feel the hard iron cuff rubbing immediately with every quick movement you make. And even if you can stand that, you, by being forced to run in a very irregular way thanks to the asymmetrical arrangement of the whole, have to concentrate more on your chains than on finding your way out, because otherwise you will soon lose your balance and stumble over your chains. So if you as a reader might be on the point of advising me to try to escape now again (apart from that, in what direction?), I have to state that such a thing was rendered totally impossible, and would in fact still be so in all later stages of my slavery. No, I can assure you, all was thought well through by those slavers in this damned building and thereafter. They clearly didn't want to run a risk, and above all not the risk that a slave would run. However, there first was - as if to fortify this interpretation of mine - an extra security check. After having me standing upright, Omar went on his knees to feel the bolt that riveted the fetter around my ankle together, testing its stability, shaking the now connected flat ends of the fetter rather roughly, I felt the hard iron rubbing my skin rather painfully - the bolt didn't gave way even a thousandth of an inch. Then he stood up, to do the same with the bolts that riveted my manacles. Of course they didn't give way either. Omar again looked very satisfied and than grinned at me: "Well, slave, you will not be able to run away now anymore. Those chains will not come off ever. You better get yourself acquainted with that soon." Than he said: "We will continue now." As we were apparently finished here, I understood his words to mean that he wanted me to walk over, but this wasn't the case. When I made preparations to take a second step, Omar intervened: "No, we are not finished here yet. Just turn around and lie back down on the bench, this time with your slave head in the direction of the anvil." While I wondered what was going to happen next, fearing something unknown and horrible, Omar shouted to the assistent: "Ali, get this slave his collar." The collar - indeed, the collar. Mohamed had mentioned it in passing in the reception room. I had forgotten it completely during the last few minutes, as I was totally overwhelmed by becoming chained. The collar! Oh my God, would that collar be as huge and heavy as the irons that already were riveted to my limbs? Again trembling I turned to the bench, as commanded. You may perhaps wonder about seeing me obey. But what else could I do? So I tried to climb onto the bench again, in the reverse direction this time, which was not as easy as my last climb, as the heavy chains tried to keep my hands and feets down. The chains rattled loud, making a lot of noise, with every movement I made. Would that sinister sound indeed always accompany me from now on? While I was doing that, Omar turned the anvil a quarter, to have it square to the bench. I now for the first time in a flash noticed that next to the far end in the main direction of the anvil - and stretching from what now, after this turning, had from my viewpoint become the near side - a kind of semicircular drain was carved out, some 5 or 6 inches wide and about the same in length. At the far end it was left complete open, at the near end a thick ridge protruded inwards for perhaps an inch more or less. Would that have something to do with my forthcoming collaring? Seeing the drain, I couldn't help having views of cruel medieval punishments like beheading coming to mind, although this, in respect of my destination of becoming a galleyslave, of course did make no sense at all. But my first spontaneous association of the drain was with the guillotine. After some struggling I finally succeeded in getting onto the bench in the desired position - and this struggling, my first struggle with my slavechains, in the meantime made clear to me how much they restricted my movements and my phyiscal possibilities, how difficult it was going to be to have to live the whole time in chains. "You better get yourself acquainted with that soon" - Omar had no problem saying it but that was quicker said than done. I laid down again, this time with my feet on the higher side and my head on the lower, which was rather uncomfortable. Behind the back of my head was the anvil, waiting. I lifted my head, and turned it into the direction where Ali now went. Fearfully I saw him walking to the bench at the far, darker side of the room, where I, when entering the hall, already had distinguished a heap of iron, but because of the dusk in that corner, at that time I couldn't figure out what exactly was there. Now it became totally clear to me: the empty manacles and fetters being displayed on the first bench, and the loose chains on the second, that was to be the bench for their whole supply of collars, waiting to adorn new slaves. After a few seconds Ali came back, carrying in front of him in both hands the next ominous shining piece of iron meant for me. He held it as though he was presenting the crown to put on the head of a new king. But it was a collar, to put around the throat of a new slave. He really strode in a solemnal way forward, I presume because of the weight of his cargo. When he came nearer, I became aware of its impressive dimensions. Really - the collar did, from an esthetical viewpoint, perfectly match my fetters! But I realized, with horror, that its weight would match very well with that of them, too. In front of the collar I saw something dangling, some thinner shiny piece of steel. When, Ali being halfway that one bench where the collars were on display and that other bench where I was on display, a ceiling light fell on it, I recognized what it was: a circular plate of sizable dimensions, the slave-tag Mohamed had made mention of. I could perceive that some symbols were stamped on it, but the distance was too great to be able to read them. This changed when Ali reached my bench and presented his gift to me: a huge collar of solid steel. I stared at it and shrunk from the enormous seize and weight. Was I to wear that? Yes, I was. "This is your collar slavecollar, G-46," Omar said with a gruff voice. "Your number is stamped on the slave-tag, as you see," he continued - and indeed I could read it now, and read it with horror – "and you better remember that from now on you are slave G-46, and that every overseer can read that always around your neck and always will address you that way for his commands. So you better learn to react immediately in case your slave number is called by one of our slave drivers, to obey immediately his commands, as reacting too slowly will be rewarded with a stroke of the lash!" "And if for some improbable reason you might lose your slave-tag, which I don't recommend you doing," he added hatefully, "you don't have to worry. Your slave-number is also stamped on the back of your collar, as it is on all three of your fetters - and those you will never lose." Reflexively I glanced down and indeed now deciphered on my manacles the signs `G-46.' I didn't doubt that it was on my anklet, too. Then I turned my attention to the collar again. I shivered, perhaps more intimidated than at any moment this afternoon before. This huge collar ... I was totally upset by the big band of heavy steel which they apparently meant me to wear from now on. It seemed huge enough to keep an elephant in check. It was perhaps just a little higher than my anklet and bracelets were, but half again as thick. I was horrified by the idea, that they would fasten it the same way they had done with the fetters around my ankle and wrists. I was really scared by the thought, it would be riveted around my neck. Its design was not just a bigger version of my other shackles. There were no flat ends this time to connect both halves and close it. The collar opened apparently at the back and had hinges on both sides, so placed between the semicircular front half and the two quarters of a circle that, afterwards riveted together, would make up the back half of the collar. On the front a big D-ring was welded square to the thick band of steel, with the round slave-tag, about 3 inches in diameter, swinging on it. "Slave G-46" was stamped on it, the number a little bit bigger than the word "slave." Surely, no severe slave driver would miss noticing it when I was toiling at the oars, as it would always be visible underneath my chin. To them, I was reduced to just a number. I gazed in trance at the horrible collar they were waving before my eyes. "Well, you have had a nice view of your collar now, slave, the same view as your oarmates will have on yours soon, as we now will rivet it on," Omar said, sarcastically intruding on my thoughts. I came back to reality and as I with reason feared that I would have to wear that collar till the end of my days, I did lose my self-control and, suddenly panic-stricken by the prospect of getting collared, started to shout. "Fuck you, you bastards, you can't do this to me. I'm not an animal! I'm ... I'm a man! I have rights!" Whap. Omar slapped me in my face, in the same aggressive way as Mohamed had done before in the reception room. "WHAT did you say, slave?!!!" "How dare you! For those unprecedented impertinent words you will punished severely, as soon as you're chained to your oar downstairs. This will be reported to your overseer, be sure about that." Omar thereupon also grumbled some angry words in Arabic that I couldn't understand. What I could understand was that I had better keep silent now, to preclude a further change for the worse. I didn't have any chance to escape or resist for the time being anyhow, so it was better to adapt myself to the new situation as best as possible. "So move your damned head in the direction of that anvil, slave." I realized that I had better obey without protesting further, but it was not very easy to do that. I felt the rough wood of the bench scraping the skin on my back when I shoved myself the way Omar ordered, trying to keep my head more or less erect to prevent bumping against the anvil that should be somewhere underneath me. "That's OK, slave." There was Omar again. "Now keep your head a little bit more erect there for a while without moving." I tried my best to do that. I guessed my neck now was somewhere on a level with the semicircular drain, my collar bones nearer to the protruding ridge. I guessed right. From the corner of my eye I could see that Ali, bearing until now the collar horizontally in front of him, turned it so that it was now held on its side, with the open ends of the collar hanging down. He moved it in my direction, and for a short while it was floating before my eyes again. I only now became aware of the fact that the open ends of the iron collar weren't cut off straight from the upper to the lower side, but that they were in a way crenelated; the left one having two rectangular projections, indeed at the upper and lower side, with a rectangular notch in between, the right one again having a rectangular one in the middle. When put together, they matched exactly, as did the holes that went through all three projections, making one small hole from the upper to the lower side of the collar. This hole clearly was intended to be filled up with one big rivet. I did see it all in a flash, but my mind was very clear now, so I did catch the point rather quickly. Then Ali lowered the collar and it disappeared out of my sight. Thereupon it went round my neck. In just a split second after that I felt the cold steel of it touching the skin of my throat. I immediately became aware of the full weight of what must have been at least 9 pounds pushing on my Adam's apple, as Ali left it there, and by doing that left me gasping for breath. One half of my neck now was encircled by solid steel. Than the open quartered ends of the collar, up until then just hanging vertically downwards, were turned by Ali to the inside and put together, the projections of one side filling in the notches of the other and reverse. The collar was closed now, Ali pressing the ends of it firmly together. Within a few seconds my neck was no longer free, but encircled by a thick ring of inflexible iron, which, after being securely closed, there would be no way out. It was a very narrow fit, there was hard and heavy cold steel now everywhere around, not more than perhaps a finger space was left between my soft skin and the hard steel. But moreover, I nearly succumbed to the immense weight of the whole. I was worried by the idea, that I had to wear this infernal collar for unending days. How, by God, would I ever be able to stand this incredible burden? I felt like a dog now, being collared, but then much worse. "Turn to the right, slave," barked Omar to me - or at least it sounded in my ears as if he did so. I turned carefully to the right, just for a quarter turn, till I laid on my side. My turning was accompanied by a noisy rattling of my chains, as if to remind me that in case that I again might consider running away, this wasn't possible anymore. My heavy irons compelled me to turn my body rather carefully; the chains connecting my fetters after that rested on my naked legs. I felt how the cold thick links of it slided over my tender skin. While doing this all, I noticed that Ali was turning the heavy collar around my neck slowly in the same direction, while of course keeping it securely closed. "Lower your head now, slave." That was Omar again. I did - and I perceived the semicircular drain under my neck. The collar was to rest there, with my neck caught inside, to be riveted on. That horrible procedure, that would seal my enslavement, would start soon afterwards. It is the most humiliating position you can imagine, lying down this way, with your neck soon going to be fettered by a huge ring of solid steel. I assure you, it really makes you feel that you are becoming a slave! There's nothing that can make anybody aware of his hopeless position more than to become collared this way, lying on your side, with your neck pressed against an anvil and already enclosed by its predestined heavy cuff, only waiting for the rivet and the fatal blows which will close it definitively around you. To be force to lie your neck down on the plank of the guillotine to wait for your execution can't be much worse. Ali thereupon pulled me by the collar a little backwards, I couldn't resist the force, and was again gasping for breath. It must have been not more than an inch or so, until I reached the desired position. I noticed that the lower side of the collar collided with some extruding part of the anvil, at least it couldn't move farther back. It must have been the ridge narrowing the drain that I already mentioned. So there I was, lying stretched on the wooden bench, my neck caught in a heavy collar kept firmly closed by the blacksmith's assistant, not being able to move. Imagine: apart from the collar coming up soon as a new adornment, I already was shackled and chained by one feet and both hands. Their weight I had to bear, too. I was indeed in a mood, as if I was going up for execution, lying there in that hopeless position, loaded with iron, not able to resist whatever was going to happen now. Well, at least my civil life in those unholy minutes indeed came to an end definitively, so a kind of execution it was. Tom was dead now, slave G-46 to come into existence. At that moment I only still didn't have the slightest idea what becoming slave G-46 in daily practice really would mean. While Ali kept me in this humiliating position lying on my right thigh, I heard Omar pushing something in the coals of the still burning fire behind me. I presume he had taken up his pair of tongs again, with a rivet held in between. I then had only to wait until it was ready for use, and Omar would take the fatal rivet out of the fire, that would fix securely the inevitable slave-collar I from now on had to wear continuously. I was quite right to presume that - what after all wasn't so difficult to do after all that had happened during the past minutes - and as if to confirm that, in the moment that I somehow noticed that the rivet was taken out as heated enough, Ali said to me: "Now lie very quietly, slave, as this is a very, very long rivet, that has to go though the whole length of your nice new collar, and if you move, the rivet may slip aside to touch your skin, and it's damned hot, I can assure you. 650 degrees Celsius will be more than you can endure stoically, I suppose. We don't want to burn our slaves without reason, only when there is a good reason for it." He laughed loudly at his own sick joke. But the real point behind it I didn't get yet at that moment, as it was far beyond my imagination. Apart from that, I hadn't much time to think it all over in tranquillity, as I, only one second after Ali had said so, already felt that the rivet was inserted, connecting the holes in the projections at both ends of the collar. I said, I felt it: apart from the fact that I heard it - all was going on very near to my ears - I also felt the heat in the air, when the red-glowing rivet was approaching my neck. After it was inserted, just as had been the case when my other fetters were riveted, the heat spread steadily through the collar itself. As the rivet was inside the curved band of steel directly attached to my skin instead of, as with my other fetters, in the projecting flat ends, it spread much quicker. I only could hope that it would be over as quickly as possible, and the collar hammered shut before it really would start to become hot. A strange hope, I agree, as this means that I was in haste to lose the freedom of my neck: the sooner it would be over, the sooner I would be collared for the rest of my life. Sounds strange, yeah, a guy begging in silence that he will become collared speedily by his captors? But I assure you, when you yourself had been lying there, your fear for immediate pain is bigger than your fear for a distant future you can't realistically imagine for yourself, as you still wouldn't believe that you are really turned into a slave and will have to wear that collar for the rest of your life indeed. Luckily - luckily? - the whole procedure didn't require much time. Although in fact it took only a few minutes, in my perception it lasted a lot longer, so much that I was longing for the cooling water at the end. I only now recognized that Ali this time was wearing gloves - he hadn't worn them during the past rivetings. Apparently he knew that the hole stuff could get rather hot this time, as more blows were needed for the big rivet to get it securely in place. He himself clearly didn't want to burn his fingers. For the galleyslave, that they were making a bit of extra pain for me of course didn't count. Ali again broke the silence, by instructing: "It's very simple now. You'll do nothing yourself, you'll be totally served by us. You only have to wait patiently and silently, until we've fixed your fine new neck ring. The only thing you have to concentrate on is to keep lying down totally motionless again, as otherwise the blacksmith may not hit your collar, but your head. And also keep silent the whole time, because he doesn't like to hear any sound coming out of your fucking throat while he's working. That's bad for his concentration, you know, and therefore may be bad for you, too. He might miss a blow then, uh oh. And believe me, after a missed blow by him, you can search for your brain-pan, as it will be smashed to blubber, and then you will not end up as a working animal on the galley but as cattle-meat for the sheik's tigers." He again laughed out loudly for his own disgusting joke, a joke he seemed to have made often. Perhaps he even made the joke every time a new slave was to be collared, he was quite the type to do that. In fact, if at that moment I had really known what it meant to become a galleyslave, I perhaps might have preferred to have my brain-pan smashed to blubber at that place before I entered Hell. But they knew that none of their newly captured oarsmen could imagine what the life of a slave is really about, so all of them - like me - in that early stage of their enslavement would prefer to live on, just to serve as a rower, and only much later regret that they survived the collaring process. Later I would learn that the slavers on board, knowing that slaves - to escape their hopeless existence, mentally exhausted by the boring, strenuous toiling on the oars day after day, realizing gradually that they don't have any prospect of a more human life in the future - might try to commit suicide, would do everything to keep them alive. Just because of profit motives, it was their goal to keep all their slaves healthy AND fearful, in good physical condition but at the same time a bad mental condition, by punishing them in very cruel and painful ways, but without ever ruining their usefulness and precious working power. Because killing or mutilating your slave is destroying your own property, and a reasonable slave-owner will never do that. Well, reasonable they were, according to the whole organization they had set up - if you can at least call the whole damned enterprise I had gotten into, in such a treacherous way, reasonable as such. When reading all this about waging death against slavery, about preferring a quick end of life over a painful lasting of it, this may sound rather abstract to you. But the bullwhip is real, and one lash of it will help you to slave better, and prefer slaving to a second lash. And, oh yes, you may prefer to be dead, when hit that second time! But the point is: that's not up to you anymore. At that damned moment you don't have the choice between being dead or being lashed - you only have the choice between toiling harder or being lashed again and again. That's what makes the bullwhip such a diabolical instrument of discipline: if well handled - and let me tell you, those overseers on galleys know to handle the whip well! - every stroke of it on his naked back for a slave is painful beyond imagination; but at the same time by doing this, the overseer even in the worst case never ruins more than the slave's back. A galleyslave needs just his hands and arms for rowing, the rest of his body only has a function to help remind him to do that necessary task with all the force that's inside him. And a bare back, exposed to as many lashes as may be needed for stimulation, in that case is a very welcome gift to the slave's overseer. All this of course I didn't know at the very moment I was lying there on that wooden bench, with my neck strapped in a heavy iron slave-collar resting on an anvil, waiting to have it riveted together for ever. Perhaps this waiting made the whole even more horrible - waiting for what you know will come, but of which you don't know exactly when it comes. Whereas I had been able to watch the riveting of my hands and my ankle, and was prepared for the heavy strokes the riveting hammer gave, this wasn't possible with the collar, as it was riveted at the back. Each time it was an attack I couldn't watch coming, and the first blow thus was totally unexpected. I wasn't able to see exactly what they were going to do as in the case of the other cuffs. But I was able to feel it and hear it - and believe me, that was perhaps more frightening than also seeing it, for by only hearing and feeling, without seeing, the whole collaring process became more intense. Because you don't know what's exactly going on, and just can be sure, something horrible is steadily happening to you that you can't prevent, so you have to wait for the `unknown', but `sensed', result at the end. So all I could do was lie down, waiting in a passive state until the whole thing was over. You really feel as if you are brought to a slaughterhouse, reduced to a piece of powerless slave-meat. Well, the rivet would have been inserted just a few seconds before, when I suddenly felt and heard the first blow with the heavy iron mallet Omar had taken, coming from behind. Wham! The enormous strong blow hit the rivet inserted at the lower end of the hole, just above my shoulders. It was very close to my ears, and the dull drone of the mallet at my collar made me shiver. It was much more horrible than I'd ever imagined before. I heard the upper side of the collar crashing against the ridge of the anvil that had to catch the blow. With the help of its resistance the tapering red-hot rivet first was driven further into the hole and then, with several more blows to come, would be flattened between the collar and the anvil, till after a dozen of them it had become so broad that it wouldn't be possible to remove the rivet anymore, and thus the collar would be tightly closed. By the force of that blow, just the first of a series to come, the slave-collar, and thus my neck inside and my head and body attached to my neck on one side and the other, shook to and fro. I had never experienced something so horrible as that! The tremendous shock of the blow went through my throat, my chin, my head, through my whole body, straight to my hands and feet. My chains rattled, as my body didn't stay motionless after that unexpected enormous first blow. And then that sound! O God, that sound, that horrible sound of the blow of that mallet! I'll never forget that sound! It was a terrible sound! To me it was the most terrible sound I'd ever heard till then. The first hit of the hammer on the big rivet rumbled and roared into my ears as never did any sound before. It entered my head from behind, as everything came from behind now, and went through and through and through. It pierced through all my bones. And I knew that there would follow a lot of blows after that! How to describe my feelings at that moment! O dear, there's nothing comparable to being forced to lie down as I was and having to listen defenselessly to the blows of a mallet behind you, while knowing that with each new blow a hot bold is driven more irreversibly inside the holes of a thick iron band slapped around your neck, and thus is riveting each time more firmly together both halves of the heavy collar which makes a galleyslave out of you forever. I assure you, there's nothing that can make your sense of losing your freedom, yes, of your masculinity, more intense than that. Omar waited a while until my shaking body came to a standstill again, and he thus better was able to level the mallet more exactly to avoid hitting the back of my head or worse. Wham! There was the second blow. Although I expected it, I couldn't foresee the exact moment, and thus it came unexpectedly. Then the next blow followed after a short interval, but hard and unavoidable, and then again the next. Each time it was the same - and at the same time every subsequent blow was different from its predecessors. A sudden Wham! Then silence - and waiting on my part until Omar would draw out again. The next blow then always came a little later or earlier than I anticipated. Thanks to the uneven rhythm my mind strayed a little, and then suddenly: Wham! Each blow not only made another horrible roar, but was attended with a brief but sharp tug on my neck, because the blacksmith smashed his hammer so violently that my collar moved back a little each time. But that little tug on my back was enough to have the inflexible iron pressing each time, with each blow, against my Adam's apple in front and get me nearly choking. O Lord, I thought I wouldn't stand it, it was such a horrible experience, the more, as the clasping metal band was becoming warmer and warmer. But I didn't dare move, fearing that otherwise Omar by accident may struck my head instead of the rivet, or the fixing would take more time, and therefore the iron of my collar would become hotter still. Then, with the twelfth blow - if I counted them well - Omar stopped and let down his mallet finally. The collar already was really painfully burning around my throat, I feared for burn wounds on my skin inside the cuff. Water, I begged in silence, water, please water! Goddammit, come on with the water, Jesus, I can't wait for it any longer. Where the hell can the water be? Powerless, I started to twist in pain. It took seconds, but it seemed to me to be hours until I was released and Ali finally chucked some cold water onto the collar. It hissed furiously as it cooled, as must the rivet that held it fixed behind me and in the forthcoming seconds was definitively made irremovable. I knew that the cooler, and thus more bearable, the collar became the cooler that bolt and thus more inflexible it became too, and that the more inflexible the bolt became, the more definitely it would weld both parts of my slave-collar together, and that there was no way out left for my head anymore. Then the hissing stopped, and the iron band around my neck was cold again - as must have been the rivet, which nobody could remove now by any means. So that was that. What seemed to be the most humiliating part of my introduction to slavery was over. Gasping for air, I tried to realize what hopeless state I had ended up in. I was collared now, collared as a slave. It still seemed incredible to me. For the future I had to wear this heavy and high tight-fitting ring of infrangible iron around my neck permanently! I had to wear it day and night, to work in it, to eat in it, to sleep in it. I had to live in it twenty-four hours a day as the most visible and most pinching mark of my enslavement. And above all: I apparently had to wear it for the rest of my life! O God! I wouldn't be able to remove it in whatever way, I knew it. I had to inure myself to it, I had no other choice than that. I was not a man any more, I was lowered to the rank of a dog, of a head of cattle, of a tool, with which those slave drivers could do what they wanted. I was a slave now, and everybody seeing me could be aware of that at once. "That's it, you won't lose your new ornament easily now," intervened Omar into my troubled thoughts. After a while he added sarcastically: "Well slave, that feels much better, wearing your new iron collar, doesn't it?" "And you will feel even better still, when you're chained up soon as a real galleyslave to your oar," he continued jeering. He then paused for the second time. "Perhaps you still want to run away, slave?" There he was back again, even more satanic. "Perhaps you want to make complaints at the police station, slave? You perhaps still think that anybody will believe you when you say you're a free man, that you are NOT a slave? That those chains just by accident are riveted on your limbs? Be sure, boy, all has been taken care of with the authorities. This is Saudi Arabia, boy! Slavery is a normal part of society here, and for the government all of you will just be newly enslaved criminals, condemned to serve at the oars." Although the last information was totally new to me - of course I wasn't able to prove if Omar's allegations were true - I only listened with half an ear to him, coping with my own thoughts and fear for the future. I still couldn't grasp it, the riveting of this heavy collar that still made me gasp for breath, although this kind of riveting had already been done to me three times just before on a smaller scale! This was barbaric, as if the Middle Ages weren't still over now! To weld my collar and those fetters in place! This all clearly was a permanent business, with no question of being released for a while now and again. They really meant these things to stay on. I had to wear them day and night, to work in them, to sleep in them, to live in them. And that as long as I would have to serve at that unholy galley of theirs! It seamed unbearable to me and it still seemed unbelievable to me. I was chained and collared now for life, and was really looking like a slave. The slave-tag swinging from the front of my collar, with that hateful `Slave G-46' stamped on it, told everybody what I was. As Omar just rightly had predicted, nobody would doubt that I was a slave now anymore, as I was completely fitted out as one. At least, I thought so. But didn't I tell you the last time, the worst was still to come? Indeed, at that moment that I was allowed to rise from this damned torture bench after my collaring, it still was.