When George Foster was again permitted to go on deck the sight that he
beheld was not calculated to comfort him in his misfortunes.
Several Moorish seamen were going about with bared legs and arms,
swishing water on the decks and swabbing up the blood, with which they
were bespattered. Most of these men were more or less wounded and
bandaged, for the crew of the merchantman they had attacked had offered
a desperate resistance, knowing well the fate in store for them if
captured.
The said merchantman, a large brig, sailed close alongside of the pirate
vessel with a prize crew on board. Her own men, who were Russians, had
been put in chains in the fore part of their vessel under the
forecastle, so as to be out of sight. Her officers and several
passengers had been removed to the pirate's quarter-deck. Among them
were an old gentleman of dignified bearing, and an elderly lady who
seemed to be supported, physically as well as mentally, by a tall,
dark-complexioned, noble-looking girl, who was evidently the daughter of
the old gentleman, though whether also the daughter of the elderly lady
young Foster could not discover, there being little or no resemblance
between them. The memory of his mother and sister strongly inclined the
sympathetic midshipman to approach the party and offer words of
consolation to the ladies. As he advanced to them for that purpose, a
doubt as to which language he should use assailed him. French, he knew,
was the language most likely to be understood, but a girl with such
magnificent black eyes must certainly be Spanish! His knowledge of
Spanish was about equal to that of an ill-trained parrot, but what of
that? Was he not a Briton, whose chief characteristic is to go in for
anything and stick at nothing?
We do not venture to write down what he said, but when he had said it
the blank look of the elderly lady and the peculiar look of the girl
induced him to repeat the speech in his broken--his very much broken--
French, whereupon the old gentleman turned to him gravely and said--
"My vife is Engleesh, an' my datter is Danish--no, not joost--vell, she
is 'af-an'-'af. Speak to dem in your nattif tong."
"_You_ are not English, anyhow, old boy," thought Foster, as he turned
with a mingled feeling of confusion and recklessness to the elderly
lady.
"Pardon me, madam," he said, "but from the appearance of--of--your--"
He was interrupted at this point by the captain, who, flushed and
blood-bespattered from the recent fight, came aft with a drawn scimitar
in his hand, and sternly ordered the young midshipman to go forward.
It was a humiliating position to be placed in; yet, despite the
"stick-at-nothing" spirit, he felt constrained to obey, but did so,
nevertheless, with an air of defiant ferocity which relieved his
feelings to some extent. The said feelings were utterly ignored by the
pirate captain, who did not condescend even to look at him after the
first glance, but turned to the other captives and ordered them, in
rather less stern tones, to "go below," an order which was promptly
obeyed.
On reaching the fore part of the vessel, Foster found several of the
crew engaged in bandaging each other's wounds, and, from the clumsy way
in which they went to work, it was very clear that they were much more
accustomed to inflict wounds than to bandage them.
Now it must be told that, although George Foster was not a surgeon, he
had an elder brother who was, and with whom he had associated constantly
while he was studying and practising for his degree; hence he became
acquainted with many useful facts and modes of action connected with the
healing art, of which the world at large is ignorant. Perceiving that
one of the pirates was bungling a very simple operation, he stepped
forward, and, with that assurance which results naturally from the
combination of conscious power and "cheek," took up the dressing of the
wound.
At first the men seemed inclined to resent the interference, but when
they saw that the "Christian" knew what he was about, and observed how
well and swiftly he did the work, they stood aside and calmly submitted.
Foster was interrupted, however, in the midst of his philanthropic work
by Peter the Great, who came forward and touched him on the shoulder.
"Sorry to 't'rupt you, sar, but you come wid me."
"Mayn't I finish this operation first?" said Foster, looking up.
"No, sar. My orders is prumptory."
Our amateur surgeon dropped the bandage indignantly and followed the
negro, who led him down into the hold, at the further and dark end of
which he saw several wounded men lying, and beside them one or two whose
motionless and straightened figures seemed to indicate that death had
relieved them from earthly troubles.
Amongst these men he spent the night and all next day, with only a
couple of biscuits and a mug of water to sustain him. Next evening
Peter the Great came down and bade him follow him to the other end of
the hold.
"Now, sar, you go in dere," said the negro, stopping and pointing to a
small door in the bulkhead, inside of which was profound darkness.
Foster hesitated and looked at his big conductor.
"'Bey orders, sar!" said the negro, in a loud, stern voice of command.
Then, stooping as if to open the little door, he added, in a low voice,
"Don' be a fool, massa. _Submit_! Das de word, if you don' want a
whackin'. It's a friend advises you. Dere's one oder prisoner dere,
but he's wounded, an' won't hurt you. _Go_ in! won't you?"
Peter the Great accompanied the last words with a violent thrust that
sent the hapless middy headlong into the dark hole, but as he closed and
fastened the door he muttered, "Don' mind my leetle ways, massa. You
know I's bound to be a hyperkrite."
Having thus relieved his conscience, Peter returned to the deck, leaving
the poor prisoner to rise and, as a first consequence, to hit his head
on the beams above him.
The hole into which he had been thrust was truly a "black hole," though
neither so hot nor so deadly as that of Calcutta. Extending his arms
cautiously, he touched the side of the ship with his left hand; with the
other he felt about for some time, but reached nothing until he had
advanced a step, when his foot touched something on the floor, and he
bent down to feel it, but shrank hastily back on touching what he
perceived at once was a human form.
"Pardon me, friend, whoever you are," he said quickly, "I did not mean
to--I did not know--are you badly hurt?"
But no reply came from the wounded man--not even a groan.
A vague suspicion crossed Foster's mind. The man might be dying of his
wounds. He spoke to him again in French and Spanish, but still got no
reply! Then he listened intently for his breathing, but all was as
silent as the tomb. With an irresistible impulse, yet instinctive
shudder, he laid his hand on the man and passed it up until it reached
the face. The silence was then explained. The face was growing cold
and rigid in death.
Drawing back hastily, the poor youth shouted to those outside to let
them know what had occurred, but no one paid the least attention to him.
He was about to renew his cries more loudly, when the thought occurred
that perhaps they might attribute them to fear. This kept him quiet,
and he made up his mind to endure in silence.
If there had been a ray of light, however feeble, in the hold, he
thought his condition would have been more bearable, for then he could
have faced the lifeless clay and looked at it; but to know that it was
there, within a foot of him, without his being able to see it, or to
form any idea of what it was like, made the case terrible indeed. Of
course he drew back from it as far as the little space allowed, and
crushed himself up against the side of the vessel; but that did no good,
for the idea occurred to his excited brain that it might possibly come
to life again, rise up, and plunge against him. At times this thought
took such possession of him that he threw up his arms to defend himself
from attack, and uttered a half-suppressed cry of terror.
At last nature asserted herself, and he slept, sitting on the floor and
leaning partly against the vessel's side, partly against the bulkhead.
But horrible dreams disturbed him. The corpse became visible, the eyes
glared at him, the blood-stained face worked convulsively, and he awoke
with a shriek, followed immediately by a sigh of relief on finding that
it was all a dream. Then the horror came again, as he suddenly
remembered that the dead man was still there, a terrible reality!
At last pure exhaustion threw him into a dreamless and profound slumber.
The plunging of the little craft as it flew southward before a stiff
breeze did not disturb him, and he did not awake until some one rudely
seized his arm late on the following day. Then, in the firm belief that
his dream had come true at last, he uttered a tremendous yell and
struggled to rise, but a powerful hand held him down, and a dark lantern
revealed a coal-black face gazing at him.
"Hallo! massa, hold on. I did tink you mus' be gone dead, for I
holler'd in at you 'nuff to bust de kittle-drum ob your ear--if you hab
one!"
"Look there, Peter," said Foster, pointing to the recumbent figure,
while he wiped the perspiration from his brow.
"Ah! poor feller. He gone de way ob all flesh; but he hoed sooner dan
dere was any occasion for--tanks to de captain."
As he spoke he held the lantern over the dead man and revealed the face
of a youth in Eastern garb, on whose head there was a terrible
sword-cut. As they looked at the sad spectacle, and endeavoured to
arrange the corpse, the negro explained that the poor fellow had been a
Greek captive who to save his life had joined the pirates and become a
Mussulman; but, on thinking over it, had returned to the Christian faith
and refused to take part in the bloody work which they were required to
do. It was his refusal to fight on the occasion of the recent attack on
the merchantman that had induced the captain to cut him down. He had
been put into the prison in the hold, and carelessly left there to bleed
to death.
"Now, you come along, massa," said the negro, taking up the lantern,
"we's all goin' on shore."
"On shore! Where have we got to?"
"To Algiers, de city ob pirits; de hotbed ob wickedness; de home ob de
Moors an' Turks an' Cabyles, and de cuss ob de whole wurld."
Poor Foster's heart sank on hearing this, for he had heard of the
hopeless slavery to which thousands of Christians had been consigned
there in time past, and his recent experience of Moors had not tended to
improve his opinion of them.
A feeling of despair impelled him to seize the negro by the arm as he
was about to ascend the ladder and stop him.
"Peter," he said, "I think you have a friendly feeling towards me,
because you've called me massa more than once, though you have no
occasion to do so."
"Dat's 'cause I'm fond o' you. I always was fond o' a nice smood young
babby face, an' I tooked a fancy to you de moment I see you knock Joe
Spinks into de lee scuppers."
"So--he was an Englishman that I treated so badly, eh?"
"Yes, massa, on'y you didn't treat him bad 'nuff. But you obsarve dat I
on'y calls you massa w'en we's alone an' friendly like. W'en we's in
public I calls you `sar' an' speak gruff an' shove you into black
holes."
"And why do you act so, Peter?"
"'Cause, don't you see, I's a hyperkrite. I tole you dat before."
"Well, I can guess what you mean. You don't want to appear too
friendly? Just so. Well, now, I have got nobody to take my part here,
so as you are a free man I wish you would keep an eye on me when we go
ashore, and see where they send me, and speak a word for me when it is
in your power. You see, they'll give me up for drowned at home and
never find out that I'm here."
"`A free man!'" repeated the negro, with an expansion of his mouth that
is indescribable. "You tink I's a free man! but I's a slabe, same as
yourself, on'y de diff'rence am dat dere's nobody to ransum _me_, so dey
don't boder deir heads 'bout me s'long as I do my work. If I don't do
my work I'm whacked; if I rebel and kick up a shindy I'm whacked wuss;
if I tries to run away I'm whacked till I'm dead. Das all. But I's not
free. No, no not at all! Hows'ever I's free-an'-easy, an' dat make de
pirits fond o' me, which goes a long way, for dere's nuffin' like lub!"