“Not so bad,” said Ortho.
He waited till the other had gone to sleep, and then ate his cake and meat; he was ravenous and didn’t want to share it.
Black day succeeded black night down in the hold, changing places imperceptibly. Once every twenty-four hours the prisoners were taken on deck for a few minutes; in the morning and evening they were fed. Nothing else served to break the stifling monotony. It seemed to Ortho that he had been chained up in blank gloom for untold years, gloom peopled with disembodied voices that became loquacious only in sleep. Courage gagged their waking hours, but when they slept, and no longer had control of themselves, they talked, muttered, groaned and cried aloud for lost places and lost loves. At night that hold was an inferno, a dark cavern filled with damned souls wailing. Two Biscayners did actually fight once, but they didn’t fight for long, hadn’t spirit enough. It was over a few crumbs of bread that they fell out. The man on Ortho’s right, an old German seaman, never uttered a word. One morning when they came round with food he didn’t put his hand out for his portion and they found that he was dead—a fact the rats had discovered some hours before. The only person who was not depressed was Mr. Puddicombe, late of Brixham and Algiers. He had the advantage of knowing what he was called upon to face, combined with a strong strain of natural philosophy.
England, viewed from Algiers, had seemed a green land of plenty, of perennial beer and skittles. When he got home he found he had to work harder than ever he had done in Africa and, after nine years of sub-tropics, the northern winter had bitten him to the bone. Provided he did not become a Government slave (which he thought unlikely, being too old) he was not sure but that all was for the best. He was a good tailor and carpenter and generally useful about the house, a valuable possession in short. He would be well treated. He would try to get a letter through to his old master, he said, and see if an exchange could be worked. He had been quite happy in Sidi Okbar Street. The notary had treated him more as a friend than a servant; they used to play “The King’s Game” (a form of chess) together of an evening. He thought Abd-el-Hamri, being a notary, a man of means, could easily effect the exchange, and then, once comfortably settled down to slavery in Algiers, nothing on earth should tempt him to take any more silly chances with freedom, he assured Ortho. He also gave him a lot of advice concerning his future conduct.
“I’ve taken a fancy to you, my lad,” he said one evening, “an’ I’m givin’ you advice others would pay ducats and golden pistoles to get, y’understan’?”
Ortho was duly grateful.
“Are you a professed Catholic by any chance?”
“No, Protestant.”
“Well, if you was a Catholic professed I should tell you to hold by it for a bit and see if the Redemptionist Fathers could help you, but if you be a Protestant nobody won’t do nothin’ for you, so you’d best turn Renegado and turn sharp—like I done; see what I mean?”