The Pirate City: An Algerine Tale

by R. M. Ballantyne

In the midst of this scene an officer of the palace was observed to whisper in the ear of the Dey, who rose immediately and left the skiffa, bringing the amusements to an abrupt close.

Thus was sounded the first clap of the thunder storm which was about to descend on the city.

The effect of it was great, and, to some of the actors in our tale, most important.

All the executions of slaves which had been ordered to take place were countermanded, except in the cases of one or two who had rendered themselves particularly obnoxious, and a few others who were unfit for labour. This was done because Omar determined to put forth all his available power to render the fortifications of the place as strong as possible. All the slaves were therefore set to work on them, but those who had been under sentence of death were kept from too great a rebound of spirits at the reprieve, by being told that the moment the work was finished their respective punishments should be inflicted. Our poor friend Mariano was thus assailed by the horrible thought, while working at the blocks of concrete, which he mixed from morning till night, that in one such block he should ere long find a living tomb.

We need scarcely add that the thought drove him to desperation; but, poor fellow, he had by that time learned that the violence of despair could achieve nothing in the case of one on whose limbs heavy irons were riveted, and whose frame was beginning to break down under the protracted and repeated tortures to which it had been exposed.

Ah! how many wretched men had learned the same bitter lesson in the same accursed city in days gone by—whose groans and cries, though unrecorded by the pen of man, have certainly been inscribed in the book of God’s remembrance, and shall yet be brought into a brighter light than that of terrestrial day!

Omar Dey was a man of energy and decision. The instant it became known to him that England was at last stirred up to resent the insults which had been heaped upon her and other nations by the Algerines, he set about making preparations for defence on the vastest possible scale.

It was a sight worth seeing—though we cannot afford space to describe it in detail—the hundreds of camels, horses, mules, and donkeys that trooped daily into the city with provisions and matériel of every kind; the thousands of Arabs who by command flocked in from the surrounding country to defend the city, and the hundreds of Christian captives who, collected from the quarries, as well as from the fields, gardens, and stables of their respective owners, were made to swarm like bees upon the already formidable walls.

Some of the slaves were fettered; most of them, having been tamed, were free. Some were strong, others were weak, not a few were dying, but all were made to work and toil day and night, with just sufficient rest to enable them to resume labour each morning. It was a woeful sight! A sight which for centuries had been before the eyes of European statesmen, but European statesmen had preferred that European peoples should go on cutting each other’s throats, and increasing their national debts, rather than use their power and wealth to set their captive brethren free; and it was not until the nineteenth century that England, the great redresser of wrongs, put forth her strong hand to crush the Pirate City.

While these busy preparations were going on, a terrible gale arose, which did a good deal of damage to the harbour and shipping of Algiers, and, among other peculiar side-influences, inscribed the name of the French consul in the Dey’s black book. Indeed, nearly all the consuls had their place in that book now, for Omar had been chafed by the cloud of little worries that surrounded him, not having been long enough on the throne to regard such with statesman-like equanimity.