Ortho and his fellow prisoners spent the next thirty-nine hours in one
of the town mattamores, a dungeon eighteen feet deep, its sole outlet a
trap-door in the ceiling. It was damp and dark as a vault, littered with
filth and crawling with every type of intimate pest. The omniscient
Puddicombe told Ortho that such was the permanent lodging of Government
slaves; they toiled all day on public works and were herded home at
night to this sort of thing.
More than ever was Ortho determined to forswear his religion at the
first opportunity. He asked if there were any chances of escape from
Morocco. Puddicombe replied that there were none. Every man’s hand was
against one; besides, Sidi Mahomet I. had swept the last Portuguese
garrison (Mazagan) off the coast six years previously, so where was one
to run? He went on to describe some of the tortures inflicted on
recaptured slaves—such as having limbs rotted off in quick-lime, being
hung on hooks and sawn in half—and counseled Ortho most strongly,
should any plan of escape present itself, not to divulge it to a soul.
Nobody could be trusted. The slave gangs were sown thick with spies, and
even those who were not employed as such turned informer in order to
acquire merit with their masters.
“Dogs!” cried Ortho, blazing at such treachery.
“Not so quick with your ‘dogs,’” said Puddicombe, quietly. “You may find
yourself doin’ it some day—under the bastinado.”
Something in the old man’s voice made the boy wonder if he were not
speaking from experience, if he had not at some time, in the throes of
torture, given a friend away.
On the second day they were taken to the market and auctioned. Before
the sale took place the Basha picked out a fifth of the entire number,
including all the best men, and ordered them to be marched away as the
Sultan’s perquisites. Ortho was one of those chosen in the first place,
but a venerable Moor in a sky-blue jellab came to the rescue, bowing
before the Governor, talking rapidly and pointing to Ortho the while.
The great man nodded, picked a Dutchman in his place and passed on. The
public auction then began, with much preliminary shouting and drumming.
Prisoners were dragged out and minutely inspected by prospective buyers,
had their chests thumped, muscles pinched, teeth inspected, were trotted
up and down to expose their action, exactly like dumb beasts at a fair.
The simile does not apply to Mr. Puddicombe. He was not dumb; he lifted
up his voice and shouted some rigmarole in Arabic. Ortho asked him what
he was saying.
“Tellin’ ’em what I can do, bless you! Think I want to be bought by a
poor man and moil in the fields? No, I’m going to a house where they
have cous-cous every day—y’understan’? See what I mean?”
“Ahoy there, lords!” he bawled. “Behold me! Nine years was I in Algiers
at the house of Abd-el-Hamri, the lawyer in Sidi Okbar Street. No
_Nesrani_ dog am I, but a Moslem, a True Believer. Moreover, I am
skilled in sewing and carpentry and many kindred arts. Question me,
lords, that ye may see I speak the truth. Ahoy there, behold me!”
His outcry brought the buyers flocking. The auctioneer, seeing his
opportunity, enlarged on Mr. Puddicombe’s supposed merits. Positively
the most accomplished slave Algiers had ever seen, diligent, gifted and
of celebrated piety. Not as young as he had been perhaps, but what of
it? What was age but maturity, the ripeness of wisdom, the fruit of
experience? Here was no gad-about boy to be forever sighing after the
slave wenches, loitering beside the story-tellers and forgetting his
duty, but a man of sound sense whose sole interests would be those of
his master. What offers for this union of all the virtues, this
household treasure? Stimulated by the dual advertisement, the bidding
became brisk, the clamor deafening, and Mr. Puddicombe was knocked down,
body and soul for seventeen pounds, thirteen shillings and fourpence
(fifty-three ducats) to a little hunch-back with ophthalmia, but of
extreme richness of apparel.
Prisoner after prisoner was sold off and led away by his purchaser until
only Ortho remained. He was puzzled at this and wondered what to do
next, when the venerable Moor in the blue jellab finished some
transaction with the auctioneer and twitched at his sleeve. As the
guards showed no objection, or, indeed, any further interest in him, he
followed the blue jellab. The blue jellab led the way westwards up a
maze of crooked lanes until they reached the summit of the town, and
there, under the shadow of the minaret, opened a door in an otherwise
blank wall, passed up a gloomy tunnel, and brought Ortho out into a
courtyard.
The court was small, stone-paved, with a single orange tree growing in
the center and arcades supported on fretted pillars running all round.
A couple of slave negresses were sweeping the courtyard with palmetto
brooms under the oral goadings of an immensely stout old Berber woman,
and on the north side, out of the sun, reclining on a pile of cushions,
sat Captain Benjamin MacBride, the traditional picture of the seafarer
ashore, his pipe in his mouth, his tankard within reach, both arms
filled with girl. He had a slender, kindling Arab lass tucked in the
crook of his right arm, his left arm encompassed two fair-skinned
Moorish beauties. They were unveiled, bejeweled and tinted like ripe
peaches; their haiks were of white silk, their big-sleeved undergarments
of colored satin; their toes were painted with henna and so were their
fingers; they wore black ink beauty spots on their cheeks. Not one of
the brilliant little birds of paradise could have passed her seventeenth
year.
Captain MacBride’s cherry-hued countenance wore an expression of
profound content.
He hailed Ortho with a shout, “Come here, boy!” and the three little
ladies sat up, stared at the newcomer and whispered to each other,
tittering.
“I’ve bought you, d’ y’ see?” said MacBride.
“An’ a tidy penny you cost me. If the Basha wasn’t my very good friend
you’d ha’ gone to the quarries and had your heart broken first and your
back later, so you’re lucky. Now bestir yourself round about and do what
old Saheb (indicating the blue jellab) tells you, or to the quarries you
go—see? What d’ y’ call yourself, heh?”
Ortho told him.
“Ortho Penhale; that’ll never do.” He consulted the birds of paradise,
who tried the outlandish words over, but could not shape their tongues
to them. They twittered and giggled and wrangled and patted MacBride’s
cheerful countenance.
“Hark ’e,” said he at last. “Tama wants to name you ‘Chitane’ because
you look wicked. Ayesha is for ‘Sejra’ because you’re tall, but
Schems-ed-dah here says you ought to be called ‘Saïd’ because you’re
lucky to be here.” He pressed the dark Arab girl to him. “So ‘Saïd’ be
it. ‘Saïd’ I baptize thee henceforth and forever more—see?”
Break-of-Dawn embraced her lord, Tama and Ayesha pouted. He presented
them with a large knob of colored sweetmeat apiece and they were all
smiles again. Peace was restored and Ortho stepped back under his new
name, “Saïd”—the fortunate one.
From then began his life of servitude at the house on the hill and it
was not disagreeable. His duties were to tend the captain’s horse and
the household donkey, fetch wood and water and run errands. In the early
morning MacBride would mount his horse (a grossly overfed, cow-hocked
chestnut), leave the town by the Malka Gate, ride hell-for-leather,
every limb in convulsion, across the sands to the shipyards at the
southeast corner of the town. Ortho, by cutting through the Jews’
quarter and out of the Mrisa Gate as hard as he could run, usually
managed to arrive within a few minutes of the captain and spent the rest
of the morning walking the horse about while his master supervised the
work in the yards. These were on the bend of the river under shelter of
a long wall, a continuation of the town fortifications. Here the little
xebecs were drawn up on ways and made ready for sea. Renegade craftsmen
sent spars up and down, toiled like spiders in webs of rigging, splicing
and parceling; plugged shot holes, repaired splintered upper works,
painted and gilded the flamboyant beaks and sterns, while gangs of
slaves hove on the huge shore capstans, bobbed like mechanical dolls in
the saw-pits, scraped the slender hulls and payed them over with boiling
tallow. There were sailmakers to watch as well, gunsmiths and carvers;
plenty to see and admire.
The heat of the day MacBride spent on the shady side of his court in
siesta among his ladies, and Ortho released the donkey from its tether
among the olive trees outside the Chaafa Gate and fetched wood and
water, getting the former from charcoal burners’ women from the Forest
of Marmora. He met many other European slaves similarly
employed—Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, Dutchmen, Portuguese, Greeks
and not a few British. They spoke Arabic together and a lingua franca, a
compound of their several tongues, but Ortho was not attracted by any of
them; they were either too reticent or too friendly. He remembered what
Puddicombe had said about spies and kept his mouth shut except on the
most trivial topics. Puddicombe he frequently encountered in the
streets, but never at the wells or in the charcoal market. The menial
hauling of wood and drawing of water were not for that astute gentleman;
he had passed onto a higher plane and was now steward with menials under
him.
His master (whom he designated as “Sore-Eyes”) was very amiable when not
suffering from any of his manifold infirmities, amiable, not to say
indulgent. He had shares in every corsair in the port, fifteen cows and
a large orchard. The slaves had cous-cous, fat mutton and chicken
scrapings almost every day, butter galore and as much fruit as they
could eat. He was teaching Sore-Eyes the King’s Game and getting into
his good graces. But, purposely, not too deep. Did he make himself
indispensable Sore-Eyes might refuse to part with him and he would not
see Sidi Okbar Street again—a Jew merchant had promised to get his
letter through. Between his present master and the notary there was
little to choose, but Sallee was a mere rat-hole compared with Algiers.
He enlarged on the city of his captivity, its white terraces climbing
steeply from the blue harbor, its beauty, wealth and activity with all
the tremulous passion of an exile pining for home.
Many free renegades were there also about the town with whom Ortho was
on terms of friendship—mutineers, murderers, ex-convicts, wanted
criminals to a man. These gentry were almost entirely employed either as
gunners and petty officers aboard the corsairs or as skilled laborers in
the yards. They had their own grog-shops and resorts, and when they had
money lived riotously and invited everybody to join. Many a night did
Ortho spend in the renegado taverns when the rovers were in after a
successful raid, watching them dicing for shares of plunder and dancing
their clattering hornpipes; listening to their melancholy and boastful
songs, to their wild tales of battle and disaster, sudden affluence and
debauch; tales of superstition and fabulous adventure, of phantom ships,
ghost islands, white whales, sea dragons, Jonahs and mermaids; of the
pleasant pirate havens in the main, slave barracoons on the Guinea
coast, orchid-poisoned forests in the Brazils, of Indian moguls who rode
on jeweled elephants beneath fans of peacock feathers, and the ice
barriers to the north, where the bergs stood mountain-high and glittered
like green glass.
Sometimes there were brawls when the long sheath knives came out and one
or other of the combatants dropped, occasionally both. They were hauled
outside by the heels and the fun went on again. But these little
unpleasantnesses were exceptional. The “mala casta” ashore were the
essence of good fellowship and of a royal liberality; they were
especially generous to the Christian captives, far more kindly than the
slaves were to each other.
The habitual feeling of restraint, of suspicion, vanished before the
boisterous conviviality of these rascals. When the fleets came, banging
and cheering, home over the bar into the Bou Regreg and the “mala casta”
were in town blowing their money in, the Europeans met together, spoke
openly, drank, laughed and were friends. When they were gone the cloud
descended once more, the slaves looked at each other slant-wise and
walked apart.
But Ortho cared little for that; he was at home in the house on the hill
and passably happy. It was only necessary for him to watch the
Government slaves being herded to work in the quarries and salt-pans,
ill-clad, half-starved, battered along with sticks and gun butts, to
make him content with his mild lot. Not for nothing had he been named
“Saïd,” the fortunate.
He had no longer any thought of escape. One morning returning with wood
he met a rabble in the narrow Souika. They had a mule in their midst,
and dragging head down at the mule’s tail was what had once been a man.
His hands were strapped behind him so that he could in no way protect
himself but bumped along the ruts and cobbles, twisting over and over.
His features were gone, there was not a particle of skin left on him,
and at this red abomination the women cursed, the beggars spat, the
children threw stones and the dogs tore.
It was a Christian, Ortho learnt, a slave who had killed his warder,
escaped and been recaptured.
The rabble went on, shouting and stoning, towards the Fez Gate, and
Ortho drove his donkey home, shivering, determined that freedom was too
dear at that risk. There was nothing in his life at the captain’s
establishment to make him anxious to run. The ample Mahma did not regard
him with favor, but that served to enhance him in the eyes of Saheb, the
steward, between whom and the housekeeper there was certain rivalry and
no love lost.
The two negresses were merely lazy young animals with no thoughts beyond
how much work they could avoid and how much food they could steal. Of
the harem beauties he saw little except when MacBride was present and
then they were fully occupied with their lord. MacBride was amiability
itself.
Captain MacBride at sea, at the first sign of indiscipline, tricing his
men to the main-jeers and flogging them raw; Captain MacBride,
yard-master of Sallee, bellowing blasphemies at a rigger on a top-mast
truck, laying a caulker out with his own mallet for skimped work, was a
totally different person from Ben MacBride of the house on the hill. The
moment he entered its portals he, as it were, resigned his commission
and put on childish things. He would issue from the tunnel and stand in
the courtyard, clapping his hands and hallooing for his dears. With a
flip-flap of embroidered slippers, a jingle of bangles and twitters of
welcome they would be on him and he would disappear in a whirl of
billowing haiks. The embraces over, he would disgorge his pockets of the
masses of pink and white sweetmeats he purchased daily and maybe produce
a richly worked belt for Ayesha, a necklace of scented beads for Tama,
fretted gold hair ornaments for Schems-ed-dah, and chase them round and
round the orange tree while the little things snatched at his flying
coat-tails and squealed in mock terror.
What with overseeing the yards, where battered corsairs were constantly
refitting, and supervising the Pilot’s School, where young Moors were
taught the rudiments of navigation, MacBride was kept busy during the
day, and his household saw little of him, but in the evenings he
returned rejoicing to the bosom of his family, never abroad to stray,
the soul of domesticity. He would lounge on the heaped cushions, his
long pipe in his teeth, his tankard handy, Schems-ed-dah nestling
against one shoulder, Tama and Ayesha taking turns with the other, and
call for his jester, Saïd.
“Hey, boy, tell us about ole Jerry and the bear.”
Then Ortho would squat and tell imaginary anecdotes of Jerry, and the
captain would hoot and splutter and choke until the three little girls
thumped him normal again.
“Rot me, but ain’t that rich?” he would moan, tears brightening his
scarlet cheeks. “Ain’t that jist like ole Jerry—the ole rip! He-he!
Tell us another, Saïd—that about the barber he shaved and painted like
his own pole—go on.”
Saïd would tell the story. At first he had been at pains to invent new
episodes for Captain Gish, that great hero of MacBride’s boyhood, but he
soon found it quite unnecessary; the old would do as well—nay, better.
It was like telling fairy stories to children, always the old favorites
in the old words. His audience knew exactly what was coming, but that in
no way served to dull their delight when it came. As Ortho (or Saïd)
approached a well-worn climax a tremor of delicious expectancy would run
through Schems-ed-dah (he was talking in Arabic now), Tama and Ayesha
would clasp hands, and MacBride sit up, eyes fixed on the speaker, mouth
open, like a terrier ready to snap a biscuit. Then the threadbare
climax. MacBride would cast himself backwards and beat the air with
ecstatic legs; Schems-ed-dah clap her hands and laugh like a ripple of
fairy bells; Ayesha and Tama hug each other and swear their mirth would
kill them.
When they recovered, the story-teller was rewarded with rum and tobacco
from that staunch Moslem MacBride, with sweetmeats and mint tea from the
ladies. He enjoyed his evenings. During the winter they sat indoors
before charcoal braziers in which burned sticks of aromatic wood, but on
the hot summer nights they took to the roof to catch the sea breeze.
Star-bright, languorous nights they were.
Below them the white town, ghostly glimmering, sloped away to the coast
and the flats. Above them the slender minaret, while on the lazy wind
came the drone of breakers and the faint sweet scent of spice gardens.
Voluptuous, sea-murmurous nights, milk-warm, satin-soft under a tent of
star-silvered purple.
Sometimes Schems-ed-dah fingered a gounibri and sang plaintive desert
songs of the Bedouin women, the two other girls, snuggling, half-asleep,
against MacBride’s broad chest, crooning the refrains.
Sometimes Ayesha, stirred by moonlight, would dance, clicking her
bracelets, tinkling tiny brass cymbals between her fingers, swaying her
graceful body backwards and sideways, poising on her toes, arms
outstretched, like a sea-bird drifting, stamping her heels and
shuddering from head to toe.
Besides story-telling, Ortho occasionally lifted up his voice in song.
He had experimented with his mother’s guitar in times gone by and found
he could make some show with the gounibri.
He sang Romany ditties he had learnt on his travels, and these were
approved of by the Moorish girls, being in many ways akin to their own.
But mostly he sang sea songs for the benefit of MacBride, who liked to
swell the chorus with his bull bellow. They sang “Cawsand Bay,”
“Baltimore,” “Lowlands Low” and “The Sailor’s Bride,” and made much
cheerful noise about it, on one occasion calling down on themselves the
reproof of the muezzin, who rebuked them from the summit of the minaret,
swearing he could hardly hear himself shout. Eleven months Ortho
remained in congenial bondage in Sallee.
Then one morning MacBride sent for him. “I’m goin’ to set you free,
Saïd, my buck,” said he.
Ortho was aghast, asked what he had done amiss.
MacBride waved his hand. “I ain’t got nothin’ against you as yet, but
howsomdever I reckon I’d best turn you loose. I’m goin’ to sea again—as
reis.”
“Reis!” Ortho exclaimed. “What of Abdullah Benani?”
“Had his neck broken by the Sultan’s orders in Mequinez three days ago
for losin’ them three xebecs off Corunna. I’m to go in his place. I’ve
settled about you with the Basha. You’re to go to the Makhzen Horse as a
free soldier. I’ll find you a nag and gear; when you sack a rich kasba
you can pay me back. You’ll make money if you’re clever—and don’t get
shot first.”
“Can’t I go with you?”
“No. We only take Christians with prices on their heads at home. They
don’t betray us then—you might.”
“Well, can’t I stop here in Sallee?”
“That you cannot. It has struck me that you’ve been castin’ too free an
eye on my girls. Mind you, I don’t blame you. You’re young and they’re
pretty; it’s only natural. But it wouldn’t be natural for me to go to
sea and leave you here with a free run. Anyhow I’m not doin’ it.”
Ortho declared with warmth that MacBride’s suspicions were utterly
unfounded, most unjust; he was incapable of such base disloyalty.
The captain wagged his bullet head. “Maybe, but I’m not takin’ any
risks. Into the army you go—or the quarries.”
Ortho declared hastily for the army.
A fortnight later MacBride led his fleet out over the bar between
saluting forts, and Ortho, with less ceremony, took the road for
Mequinez.
That phase of his existence was over. He had a sword, a long match-lock
and a passable Barb pony under him. Technically he was a free man;
actually he was condemned to a servitude vastly more exacting than that
which he had just left. A little money might come his way, bullets
certainly, wounds probably, possibly painful death—and death was the
only discharge.
He pulled up his horse at the entrance of the forest and looked back.
His eye was caught by the distant shimmer of the sea—the Atlantic. He
was going inland among the naked mountains and tawny plains of this
alien continent, might never see it again.
The Atlantic!—the same ocean that beat in blue, white and emerald upon
the shores of home, within the sound of whose surges he had been born.
It was like saying good-by to one’s last remaining friend. He looked
upon Sallee. There lay the white town nestling in the bright arm of the
Bou Regreg, patched with the deep green of fig and orange groves. There
soared the minaret, its tiles a-wink in the sunshine. Below it, slightly
to the right, he thought he could distinguish the roof of MacBride’s
house—the roof of happy memories. He wondered if Schems-ed-dah were
standing on it looking after him. What cursed luck to be kicked out just
as he was coming to an understanding with Schems-ed-dah!