"I have sent several times to your nation," he said through his interpreter, a renegade Englishman, "offering to make peace with them if they would satisfy my requirements. They have never sent me a definite reply. Since they have treated me so disdainfully, I will never make peace with them! As for you, Christian dogs, you shall eat stones!"
The captives were driven from his presence and marched to the bagnio, or prison, where they joined six hundred Christian slaves of various nationalities—poor, broken-spirited fellows, weighed down with chains.
Their names were entered in the prison book; each of them was given a blanket, a scanty supply of coarse clothing, and a small loaf of black, sour bread. They slept on the floor, with a thin blanket between them and the cold stones.
The next day each of them had a chain weighing about forty pounds placed on him. One end was bound around the waist, and the other end was fastened by a ring about the ankle. They were then assigned various tasks for the government. The iron ring on their ankles, they learned, was the badge of public service. Though it was a cruel weight, it protected them from abuse by fanatical Moslems.
Some of the captives were employed at rigging and fitting out cruisers, and in transporting cargoes and other goods about the city. Because of the narrow streets the articles they moved could be carried only by means of poles on their shoulders. If they bumped into a citizen they were loudly cursed and beaten. The Dey was building a new mosque, and many of the Christians were employed in transporting blocks of stone from the wharf to the building. Four men were employed to move one stone, and only the strongest could bear up under such a load. Some of the captives were sent into the mountains to blast rocks. Under the direction of Moslem overseers, who cruelly beat them on the slightest excuse, the prisoners rolled rocks weighing from twenty to forty tons down the mountain, where they were then hoisted on carts, drawn by teams of two hundred or more slaves to a wharf two miles distant, where the stones were placed on scows and carried across the harbor to be fitted into a breakwater.
The prison, to which they returned after the labors of the day, was an oblong, hollow square, three stories high. The ground floor was composed of taverns that were kept by favored slaves who paid a goodly sum for rent, as well as for the liquor they sold. In this way a few of the slaves were able to earn enough money to purchase their freedom. These taverns were so dark that lamps had to be kept burning even by day. They were filled with Turks, Moors, Arabs and Christians, who often became drunk and sang and babbled in every language.
The second and third floors were surrounded by galleries that led to cell-like rooms in which the captives slept. These cells were four deep to a floor, and hung one over the other like ships' berths. They swarmed with vermin. The air was too foul to breathe. If any of the captives rebelled—there was the bastinado! The culprit was thrown down on his face; his head and hands were tied; an infidel sat on his shoulders; his legs were held up to present the soles of his feet; and two infidels delivered from one hundred to five hundred blows.
If a slave committed a very serious offense, he might be beheaded, impaled, or burnt alive. For murdering a Mohammedan one slave was cast off the walls of the city upon iron hooks fastened into the wall, where he lingered in agony for many hours before he perished.
The worst danger the Christians faced was an insidious one—the plague. In the hot, damp air of Africa a fever arises from decaying animal substances, which is spread about by swarms of locusts. A person may be attacked by only a slight fever, but he soon becomes delirious and too weak to move. In five days his body begins to turn black and then death comes. It is the black pestilence, and it attacks slaves and rulers without choice. If it had not been for a hospital maintained by Spanish priests, most of the captives would have died. As it was, many Christians perished.
Murad came into our thoughts as we brooded over Alexander's plight. He was still in Baltimore and still attended the chapel services. Did he have influence enough, we asked, to obtain my brother's freedom?