“Wallah thaib; well said by Allah!” observed Mustapha.
The pacha nodded his approbation; and the renegade proceeded with his story.
I was gifted by nature with a ready invention, and some trouble and expense were bestowed upon my education. To the profession of a barber my father added that of bleeding and tooth-drawing. At ten years old I could cut hair pretty well. People did say, that those upon whom I had operated, looked as if their heads had been gnawed by the rats; but it was the remark of envy; and, as my father observed, “there must be a beginning to every thing.”
At fifteen, I entered upon the rudiments of shaving; and after having nearly ruined my father’s credit, from the pounds of flesh which I removed with the hair of my customers, who were again consoled by his observing, that “there must be a beginning to every thing,” I became quite expert. I was subsequently initiated into the higher branches of tooth-drawing and bleeding. In the former, at first I gave great dissatisfaction, either from breaking the decayed tooth short off, and leaving the stump in the socket, or from mistaking the one pointed out, and drawing a sound engine of mastication in its stead. In the latter, I made more serious mistakes, having more than once cut so deep as to open the artery, while I missed the vein; in consequence of which I was never afterwards employed, except by a husband to relieve a scolding wife, or by nephews who were anxious about the health of an everlasting uncle. But, as my father wisely observed, “there must be a beginning to every thing;” and, as I could only practise upon living subjects, “individuals must suffer for the good of the community at large.” At the age of twenty I was an accomplished barber.
But rapid as was my career, I was not fated to continue in it long. Like the shot propelled from the mouth of the cannon, which, in its extreme velocity, is turned from the direction which has been given it by glancing along the weakest substance, so was my course of life changed from its direction by meeting with a woman.
My father had a good customer; he had shaved him every morning for years, had extracted every tooth in his head, and was now winding up his long account by bleeding him daily, under the direction of an ignorant apothecary. I was often at the house,—not to bleed him, for my father either thought him too valuable, or was too grateful for past favours to trust him in my hands;—but I held the basin, procured water, and arranged the bandages. He had a daughter, a lovely girl, whom I adored in secret; but her rank in life was too far above mine to allow me to express my feelings. I was then a handsome young man, although Time has since exerted his utmost, through jealousy, to make me appear almost as old and ill-favoured as himself. The young lady took a fancy to me, complained of the tooth-ache, and asked for remedies. I offered to extract the tooth; but either having heard of my reputation, or not wishing to remove the excuse for our interviews, or, what is still more probable, having no tooth-ache whatever, she would not consent.
The death of her mother, which had taken place when she was a child, had left her without guidance,—and the helpless situation of her father, without protection. Naturally of a warm temperament, and yielding to the impulse of her feelings, she carried on an intimacy which could only end in her disgrace; and, at the expiration of a year, her situation could no longer be concealed. I was now in a dilemma. She had two brothers in the army, who were returning home, and I dreaded their vengeance.
I loved her very much, but I loved myself more; so, one evening, I packed up all that I could call my own, and all that I could lay my hands on belonging to my honoured parent, and shipped on board a Genoese vessel, which was then standing out of the harbour. She was a large ship, mounting twelve long guns, with a complement of sixty men; being what is termed in European countries a “letter of marque.” This implies that she fights her way without convoy, capturing any of the enemy’s vessels she may happen to fall in with, who are not strong enough to resist her. We had cleared out for Genoa with a cargo of lead, which lay at the bottom of the hold, and which merely served for ballast.
I soon found out, by the conversation of the crew, that we were not to proceed to Genoa direct; in fact, your highness, she was a pirate, manned by a most desperate set of men. As soon as my qualifications were made known, I had the honour to remove the beards of sixty of the greatest villains that ever were permitted to exist, receiving nothing but blows and curses for my trouble. I certainly improved very much in my profession; for it was as much as my life was worth to draw blood, although they made no scruple of carrying on a conversation during the whole time of the operation. We had taken the cargoes out of several vessels, all of which were added to the “manifest” by our correct captain; when one day, we were chased by an English frigate. I never met the English on shore, but I must say that, afloat, they are the most impertinent people that swim on the seas. They cannot be content with minding their own business, although they have plenty on their hands, but they must interfere in that of others. They board you, and insist upon knowing where you come from, whither you are bound and what you have on board; examining you with as much scrutiny as if they had been the delegated custom-house officers of the whole world.