The Pirate City: An Algerine Tale

by R. M. Ballantyne

While these things were pending, very different scenes were taking place at the French consulate, for great preparations were going on for a mask-ball which was about to take place there.

It may, perhaps, appear strange to some readers that any one could have the heart to engage in gaieties in the midst of such horrible scenes of injustice, cruelty, and death, but it must be remembered that human beings have a wonderful capacity for becoming used and indifferent to circumstances the most peculiar—as all history assures us—and it must also be borne in remembrance that the unfortunate Sicilian captives, whose sorrows and sufferings we have tried to depict, were a mere fraction of the community in the midst of which they suffered. It is probable that the great body of the people in Algiers at that time knew little, and cared less, about the Riminis and their brethren.

Since the reconciliation of the English and French Consuls, at the time when the representative of Denmark was rescued, the Frenchman had displayed great cordiality to the Briton—not only accepting the invitations which before he had refused, but drinking with apparent enthusiasm to the health of the English king, on the occasion of a dinner given in celebration of that monarch’s birthday at the British consulate.

The mask-ball was a very great affair indeed when it came off—which it did at the country residence of the French consul. The mansion, which was Mauresque in style, was splendidly decorated with flags of various nations, and the skiffa, with its sparkling fountain and graceful palmettas, was a perfect blaze of variegated lamps. These hung amid the foliage of the creepers that twined round the curved marble pillars, and their red garish light contrasted powerfully with the clear purity of the star-lit sky, which formed the natural roof of the skiffa.

The grounds around the consulate were also decorated and lighted up with the taste for which the French are peculiarly noted.

Of course all the consuls were invited, with their respective families, and were present, with the exception of Mrs Langley, who happened to be indisposed, and Agnes, who stayed at home to nurse her mother. As an affair of the kind involved a good deal of laxity of what may be styled domestic discipline, many of the superior servants were also permitted to stroll about the grounds in fancy costumes. The consuls themselves appeared in their proper uniforms, but some of the members of their households displayed themselves in forms and aspects which we find it difficult to describe, while others of the guests habited themselves in the skins, and gave themselves the airs, of wild beasts of the forest.

There were wild-boars from the Jurjura Hills, overgrown monkeys from the gorge of “la Chiffa,” lions from Mount Atlas, and panthers from the Zahara, besides other nondescript creatures from nowhere. But these were a mere sprinkling in the gay scene of richly dressed ladies and gentlemen, among whom, strange to say, were not a few Christian slaves! These last were Italian and Portuguese officers who had been captured by the Algerines at various times. Had they been taken by civilised peoples, they would have been deemed prisoners of war, and treated as such, but the pirates styled them slaves, and would certainly have treated them as beasts of burden—as they treated hundreds of their countrymen—but for the fact that they had friends at home who paid an annual sum to purchase for them exemption from such drudgery. Having nothing to do, and no means of escaping, these unfortunate men did what they could to mitigate the woes of their brethren—though they were not allowed to do much—and entered more or less into the society and amusements of the city. Hence, though liable at any moment to be put in chains, or sent to the quarries, or even slain by their savage captors, they were to be found waltzing at the fancy ball of the French consul!

Among those who cut a very conspicuous—we may venture to say a beastly—figure that night was our friend Ted Flaggan. The eccentric tar, desiring to enjoy the ball under the shelter of a mask which would preserve his incognito, had, with the aid of Rais Ali, provided himself with the complete skin of a wild-boar, including the head with its enormous tusks, and, having fitted it to his person, and practised a variety of appropriate antics, to the delight of Agnes, who was the only person besides Rais admitted to his secret, he felt himself to be quite up in his part—almost fitted to hold converse with the veritable denizens of the forest.

Flaggan had arranged that he was to put on the boar-dress in the town residence of Rais Ali. Being unwilling to attract the attention of the populace by passing through the streets, in broad daylight, he determined to postpone his advent to an advanced part of the evening.

It was a clear, calm night when he left the country residence of the British consul, with a crescent moon to light him on his way. He had just issued from the garden gate, when an old man, clad in a half-monkish robe, advanced, towards him with strides that would have done credit to a dragoon.