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.