Chapter Nine.
The marooned Man tells his Story.
Crouching over the fire, the marooned man proceeded to tell his story.
“Well,” he began, “I must tell you first that I was born in the year 1532, in the town of Monmouth, in Wales, of purely Welsh parents, bearing the ancient name of Evans. In my early youth I kept about the house and tended our flock of sheep, of which we had a great many, on the dear old Welsh mountains. This life suited me well, for I was of a studious frame of mind, fond of learning, and I read and studied much while out on the hills with the sheep. At this time our family was very prosperous; but not long afterwards England began to be torn by those religious struggles, which I doubt not you two older men will well remember, and we were unfortunate enough to have our lands confiscated by that tyrant, King Henry the Eighth, and, from a state of prosperity and the possession of all we could reasonably wish, my family found itself landless, without money, and even without a home. Besides myself, there were two other children, both girls; and what worried my poor parents most was the problem of what to do with us three children. Fortunately an uncle of my mother—a man whose religious convictions had a habit of changing with the times—had retained all his property, and he undertook to take my two young sisters and bring them up as his own children. This kindness on his part relieved my parents of much anxiety; but there was still the difficulty as to what to do with me. At last it was decided, in the absence of anything better, that I should go to sea; and accordingly, although I did not at all care for the idea, to sea I had to go, since no other course was open to me. My father secured me a berth as cabin-boy on board a vessel called the Delight, trading between London and ports on the Mediterranean, and commanded by a man named Thomas West. It had happened that my father, in the time of his prosperity, had been able to do this man a service, and that was the reason why he took me on board his ship; and I am bound to say that he was always very kind to me. The time for the next voyage came round only too quickly for my liking, and I bade a sad farewell to my father and mother, who somehow scraped up money enough to go to London with me to see me off, little dreaming, poor souls, that they would never see me again.”
The pirate’s voice shook slightly; he paused for a moment, and brushed the back of his hand across his eyes; then, clearing his throat, he resumed: “We left London in the latter part of the year 1547, when I was very nearly sixteen years of age, and, sailing down the English Channel, we entered the Bay of Biscay and touched at our first port, which was Bordeaux. From thence we sailed again, and—just before Christmas it was, I remember—we cleared the Straits of Jebel-al-Tarik, as the Moors call them, and entered the great inland sea. We coasted down its shores, touching first at Barcelona, for we were not then at war with Spain, and then at Marseilles, from which port we struck across for Sicily, intending to call at Palermo. But on the way there we fell in with a Barbary corsair. Our captain was a brave man, and determined to fight to the last, as he had a very valuable cargo on board. The fight began early in the morning, and the pirate tried at first to ram our ship with his sharp beak; but the wind was good, and our ship was so nimble, and answered her helm so well, that we were able to avoid the rushes of the corsair, although he nearly had us on one occasion. Finding that these tactics did not answer, he drew off and, turning his broadside to us, lacked us through and through with his ordnance until we were a mere floating wreck, and half our ship’s company lay dead on our decks. We replied as well as we could; but, being only a merchant-ship, we were not nearly so heavily armed as the corsair; and, our men being untrained in warfare, very few of our shot hit him, so that the rascal was but little the worse. Their captain then hailed us, and asked whether we would surrender; but the master of the Delight shouted back that if he wanted the ship he must come and take her.
“Whereat he came at us again, and laid himself alongside us, we not being able to move by this time, owing to our having lost all our masts, and being so encumbered with wreckage that we could do nothing. About a hundred fierce and bloodthirsty ruffians swarmed aboard us and began to cut us down and drive us toward the fore-part of the ship, while we, on our side, fought bravely enough with what weapons we could lay our hands on. But at last our gallant captain fell dead, cut down by the scimitar of a gigantic blackamoor, and the rest of us—very few by that time, I can assure you,—seeing this, threw down our arms and surrendered to the corsairs. There were then but seventeen of us left, all told, and not one of us but had his wound to show as the result of the fight. Five out of that seventeen, indeed, were so badly wounded that they died of their hurts before the corsair reached her port, leaving only twelve of us, all Englishmen, to be sent into slavery. After the corsairs had removed us to their own ship, they stripped the Delight of all that she carried, transferring all her cargo to their own hold. They were greatly pleased at the result of their day’s work—for they had made a good haul—and made all haste to return to their port, which was Tunis. But before bearing up they set fire to our ship, and when we last saw the Delight she was blazing merrily. I make no doubt that she sank shortly afterwards, leaving no trace behind.”
“You’m wrong there, mate,” broke in Jake Irwin. “Don’t you mind that it rained heavily soon afterwards? Well, the rain put out the fire, and an English ship comin’ up found her still smoulderin’, with enough of her left to show that she was the Delight. She brought the news of the loss of the Delight into Plymouth—I remember hearin’ all about it,—and it was thought she had took fire in the ordinary way, and that her crew, havin’ gone off in the boats, was a’terwards lost. No one ever gave a thought to pirates or corsairs.”
“Ah,” resumed Evans, “would to God that that vessel had come up sooner! We should have been saved—those left of us—from a living death that lasted for many years. Yes, now you come to mention it, I remember the rain; but we never dreamed that it would put out the fire, for we left her burning furiously. Well, the other ship was too late, and it makes no difference now. But, to get on with my yarn. We reached the port of Tunis about ten days later, and there was much joy there when it was found what a valuable cargo the corsair had brought back; and the joy was all the greater because of the twelve white prisoners, for white slaves are reckoned very valuable in those parts, and there hadn’t been any taken for a very long while. We were all put up to auction, and the man who bid highest got the man he fancied. A big Moor from the back-country took a liking for me, for I was a fine strapping youngster then, although you mightn’t think it to look at me now. Well, he bought me, but me only; so I said good-bye to my comrades, never expecting to see them again, and we set off with my master’s caravan for the interior.
“His home must have been some hundreds of miles in the interior, for it took us over two months of travelling every day to get there. We struck from the town of Tunis south-eastwards, as I could tell by the sun. After travelling for a long time we came to a big river, with fields of rice on each side of it, and beyond them the burning desert, with hills and mountains behind that again. When we came to the river we left the camels, and proceeded in boats until we came to a mighty waterfall, where we quitted the river for a time, and went a little way overland; then we took to the river again. This we did four times, and at last, after more than two months, travelling all the time, we came to a big town, built all of white stone, very fine to see. All around were green places like parks, with wells of good water in them; and there were palm-trees all about, and palaces of white marble; it was a lovely place for a free man to live in, but for a slave it was dreadful.