"God is supreme!" ejaculates a bystander.
"But these infidels of Nazarenes know nothing of Him. His curse be on them!" answers the policeman. "They made us ride the poor man round the town on a bare-backed donkey, with his face to the tail, and all the way two of us had to thrash him, crying, 'Thus shall be done to the man who robs a consul!' He was ready to faint before we got him up here. God knows we don't want to lash him again!"
Next day as we pass the gaol we stop to inquire after the prisoner, but the poor fellow is still too weak to receive the balance due, and so it is for several days. Then they tell us that he has been freed from them by God, who has summoned his spirit, though meanwhile the kindly attentions of a doctor have been secured, and everything possible under the circumstances has been done to relieve his sufferings. After all, he was "only a Moor!"
[page 241]
The Greek consul reported that the condition of the Moorish prisons was a disgrace to the age, and that he had himself known prisoners who had succumbed to their evil state after receiving a few strokes from the lash.
A statement of claim for a thousand dollars, alleged to have been robbed from his house, was forwarded by courier to his chief, then at Court, and was promptly added to the demands that it was part of His Excellency's errand to enforce.
[*] All these statements were taken down from the lips of the victims at the prison door, and most, if not all of them, were supported by documentary evidence.