Читать книгу Pirate Princes and Yankee Jacks - Daniel Henderson - Страница 8

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"What does it mean to them that somewhere men are free?

Naked and scourged and starved, they groan in slavery!"

The rector had encouraged me to browse through his library. He said that ministers should be well-read men. It was no hardship for me—I was fond of books. One day, as I was reading "Hakluyt's Voyages," he rushed into the room. His usually pale face was red and distorted from excitement.

"David, I've news of your brother!" he cried. "I told you that there was a Providence that safeguarded scapegraces! He's in Algiers. He's been captured by pirates! They're holding him in slavery for ransom!"

"Humph," said the commodore, who had followed him into the room, "I don't call that being guided by a special Providence!"

"Well," the rector said, "they might have killed him, or he might have died of a fever in that pestilential country. Yes, I think Providence is watching over him!"

The news had come in a bulky envelope that had been forwarded to Dr. Eccleston by the State Department.

"Read that," cried the rector, tossing the letter into my lap, "and see what becomes of lads who leave comfortable homes to sail the ocean!"

He lit his pipe and fell to brooding, while I gleaned from the roughly scribbled epistle the story of Alexander's capture by Turkish corsairs.

That the Mediterranean Sea was infested by pirates Captain Stephens, with whom Alexander sailed, well knew. But Cadiz lay outside of the usual zone of the buccaneers, and the idea of danger from corsairs scarcely entered the thoughts of the skipper and his men. Yet, on July 25, 1785, while the Marie was passing Cape Saint Vincent, she was pursued by a rakish lateen-sailed vessel. Despite desperate attempts to outsail her pursuer, she was soon overtaken. Threatened by fourteen ugly cannon, she awaited the approach of the stranger.

The Marie was hailed in Spanish. Captain Stephens shouted in reply the name and destination of his vessel. He had little doubt that he would be allowed to proceed and was on the point of giving orders to resume the voyage, when a crowd of seamen in Turkish dress appeared on the deck of the vessel, which now was found to be an Algerine corsair.

The dark, bearded faces of the Moslems were forbidding enough, but when the Mussulmans drew near with savage gestures and a wild brandishing of weapons, the Marie's men knew that either death or slavery awaited them.

A launch thronged with Moors and Arabs, armed with pistols, scimeters, pikes and spears, put out from the side of the zebec. They fired several volleys that came dangerously close to the heads of the American sailors, and threatened to slaughter the crew if they resisted.

Captain Stephens, when a pistol was held against his breast, surrendered his ship. He and his crew were transferred to the corsair, first having been stripped of all their clothes except their undergarments. They were pricked and prodded until they reached the forepart of the Algerine ship, where the commander, Rais Ibrahim, a vicious-looking old Moor, who kept his hand on the pistol that protruded from his sash as if his fingers itched to fire a bullet into a Christian's body, repeated the threat of massacre if the captives disobeyed his orders.

Captain Stephens, who spoke Spanish, went as far as was safe in protesting against the seizure.

Rais Ibrahim, crying upon Allah to wipe out all Christians, replied that the ships of Barbary were no longer limited by the Mediterranean Sea. He declared that Algiers had made a peace with her ancient enemy Spain and was free now to send her vessels through the Strait into the Atlantic.

"Have you papers," he sneered, "showing that your country is paying tribute to the Dey of Algiers? If your government has not purchased immunity from attack by our corsairs, do not protest to me against your capture, but rather blame your rulers for neglecting to follow the wise example of the nations of Europe, who pay my lord the gold that he demands!"

A Moslem crew was placed aboard the Marie, and she was sailed as a prize into Algiers. There the prisoners found in captivity the crew of the American ship Dauphin, under Captain Richard O'Brien, who, with his mate, Andrew Montgomery, and five seamen, had been captured by an Algerine corsair near Lisbon.

To announce to the city that he was approaching with a prize the Moslem captain fired gun after gun. The Port Admiral came out in a launch to examine the prize and prisoners so that he might make a report to the Dey; the people on shore gathered at the wharves to gloat over the new wealth that had come to the city; the barrooms became crowded with revelers; everyone except the slaves rejoiced.

The captors were received by their relatives and friends on shore with cheers and exultation. Estimates of the value of the prisoners and the ship passed from one to another. The captives were given filthy rags to cover their nakedness, and were marched through the streets between rows of jeering infidels. Their destination was the palace of the Dey. They were driven across the courtyard of the palace, where they entered a hall. They then were pushed and prodded by their guards up five flights of stairs, where they went through a narrow, dark entrance into the Dey's audience room.

He sat, a dark, fat, greasy creature, upon a low bench that was covered with cushions of embroidered velvet.

He viewed the Americans with great resentment.

"I have sent several times to your nation," he said through his interpreter, a renegade Englishman, "offering to make peace with them if they would satisfy my requirements. They have never sent me a definite reply. Since they have treated me so disdainfully, I will never make peace with them! As for you, Christian dogs, you shall eat stones!"

The captives were driven from his presence and marched to the bagnio, or prison, where they joined six hundred Christian slaves of various nationalities—poor, broken-spirited fellows, weighed down with chains.

Their names were entered in the prison book; each of them was given a blanket, a scanty supply of coarse clothing, and a small loaf of black, sour bread. They slept on the floor, with a thin blanket between them and the cold stones.

The next day each of them had a chain weighing about forty pounds placed on him. One end was bound around the waist, and the other end was fastened by a ring about the ankle. They were then assigned various tasks for the government. The iron ring on their ankles, they learned, was the badge of public service. Though it was a cruel weight, it protected them from abuse by fanatical Moslems.

Some of the captives were employed at rigging and fitting out cruisers, and in transporting cargoes and other goods about the city. Because of the narrow streets the articles they moved could be carried only by means of poles on their shoulders. If they bumped into a citizen they were loudly cursed and beaten. The Dey was building a new mosque, and many of the Christians were employed in transporting blocks of stone from the wharf to the building. Four men were employed to move one stone, and only the strongest could bear up under such a load. Some of the captives were sent into the mountains to blast rocks. Under the direction of Moslem overseers, who cruelly beat them on the slightest excuse, the prisoners rolled rocks weighing from twenty to forty tons down the mountain, where they were then hoisted on carts, drawn by teams of two hundred or more slaves to a wharf two miles distant, where the stones were placed on scows and carried across the harbor to be fitted into a breakwater.

The prison, to which they returned after the labors of the day, was an oblong, hollow square, three stories high. The ground floor was composed of taverns that were kept by favored slaves who paid a goodly sum for rent, as well as for the liquor they sold. In this way a few of the slaves were able to earn enough money to purchase their freedom. These taverns were so dark that lamps had to be kept burning even by day. They were filled with Turks, Moors, Arabs and Christians, who often became drunk and sang and babbled in every language.

The second and third floors were surrounded by galleries that led to cell-like rooms in which the captives slept. These cells were four deep to a floor, and hung one over the other like ships' berths. They swarmed with vermin. The air was too foul to breathe. If any of the captives rebelled—there was the bastinado! The culprit was thrown down on his face; his head and hands were tied; an infidel sat on his shoulders; his legs were held up to present the soles of his feet; and two infidels delivered from one hundred to five hundred blows.

If a slave committed a very serious offense, he might be beheaded, impaled, or burnt alive. For murdering a Mohammedan one slave was cast off the walls of the city upon iron hooks fastened into the wall, where he lingered in agony for many hours before he perished.

The worst danger the Christians faced was an insidious one—the plague. In the hot, damp air of Africa a fever arises from decaying animal substances, which is spread about by swarms of locusts. A person may be attacked by only a slight fever, but he soon becomes delirious and too weak to move. In five days his body begins to turn black and then death comes. It is the black pestilence, and it attacks slaves and rulers without choice. If it had not been for a hospital maintained by Spanish priests, most of the captives would have died. As it was, many Christians perished.

Murad came into our thoughts as we brooded over Alexander's plight. He was still in Baltimore and still attended the chapel services. Did he have influence enough, we asked, to obtain my brother's freedom?

The commodore had sworn that the Egyptian went to church only for the purpose of ingratiating himself with Americans upon whom he had designs. The rector had retorted that he could not allow himself to suspect one of his flock of any but pure motives when entering the house of God. He himself, I felt, disliked the man from the East, but he concealed it well. Therefore, when Murad came to our door, the rector invited him into the library and told him briefly what had happened.

"I am heart-broken over it!" Murad exclaimed, gazing at me with his great liquid eyes, "and I am helpless because I am no longer a follower of Mohammed; yet your Government will surely be able to ransom your brother and his comrades. I do not think their lives will be in danger if your statesmen appropriate the money promptly. It's shocking, of course, yet it's quite the usual thing to pay these ransoms. England, Spain, France—all do it. You see, ever since the days when the Queen of Sheba brought tribute to King Solomon, the Orientals have been trained to look for gifts from foreigners who touch their shores."

The rector looked dismayed at this attempt to justify kidnapping by the Scriptures. "It's time," he said, "for this western world to teach those ruffians that blackmail is blackmail and that murder is murder!"

He fumbled with the envelope that had contained Alexander's letter. A slip of paper slid out. He read to us this memorandum, written by my brother:

Amount of Ransom demanded by the Dey of Algiers for the Release of American captives

"Crew of ship Dauphin:
	Algerine Sequins
Richard O'Brien, captain, ransom demanded	2,000
Andrew Montgomery, mate	1,500
Jacob Tessanoir, French passenger	2,000
Wm. Paterson, seaman	1,500
Philip Sloan	725
Peleg Lorin	725
John Robertson	725
James Hall	725
"Crew of ship Marie:
	Algerine Sequins
Isaac Stephen, captain, ransom demanded	2,000
Alexander Forsyth, mate	1,500
George Smith, seaman	900
John Gregory	725
James Hermet	725

"How much is 1,500 Algerine sequins?" I asked Murad.

"A sequin," he explained, "amounts to eight shillings sterling, so that 12,000 shillings will be required for Alexander, and 126,000 shillings for the entire lot. There must be added to this sum 10 or 20 per cent of the total as bribes to the Dey's officers, and as commission to brokers. There are Jewish merchants over there whose chief business it is to procure the release of captives—for a consideration!

"I know such a merchant in Algiers," Murad went on, "I shall write to him to interest himself in the captives and to use his influence to see that they are kindly treated. Perhaps he will be able to reduce the amount of the ransom. When the money is raised, I shall be at your service for negotiations."

He bowed himself out. The rector went to the window and stood staring out after him. "It can't be," I heard him say, "and yet, if the commodore heard what he said to me, he'd swear the fellow was an agent for the corsairs!"