“He must ha’ bin a cowardly feller, that consul!”
“No,” said the interpreter sternly, “him’s not coward. Him was my master, Kurnil Langley, an’ only do the right ting: humbil hisself to our Dey w’en hims contry do wrong.—Now, here we is comin’ to Bab-el-Oued, that means the Water-gate in yoor lingo, w’ere the peepils hold palaver.”
This in truth appeared to be the case, for many of the chief men of the city were seated under and near the gate, as the two drew near, smoking their pipes and gossiping in the orthodox Eastern style.
The big Irishman attracted a good deal of notice as he passed through the gates; but Turks are grave and polite by nature: no one interrupted him or made audible comments upon his somewhat wild and unusual appearance.
Passing onwards, they entered the town and traversed the main street towards the Bab-Azoun gate, which Ali explained to his companion was the Gate of Tears, and the place of public execution.
Here they came suddenly on the body of a man, the feet and limbs of which were dreadfully mangled, showing that the miserable wretch had perished under the bastinado.
At the time we write of, and indeed at all times during Turkish rule, human life was held very cheap. For the slightest offences, or sometimes at the mere caprice of those in power, men were taken up and bastinadoed in the open streets until they died from sheer agony, and their relations did not dare to remove the bodies for burial until their tyrants had left the scene. Cruelty became almost the second nature of the people. Theft was checked by the amputation of the first joint of the fore-finger of the right hand for the first offence. For the second, the whole hand was sacrificed, and for the third, the head itself was forfeited. Sometimes, in cases of capital punishment, decapitation was performed by degrees! and other refinements too horrible to mention were constantly practised.
While the interpreter was explaining to his companion as much of this as he deemed it right for him to know, several of the sorrowing relations of the dead man came forward and carried the body away. Little notice was taken of the incident, which, from beginning to end, scarcely interrupted the general flow of business.
At the Bab-Azoun gate, which occupied a position not many yards distant from the spot on which now stands the principal theatre of Algiers, Ali left Ted Flaggan for a few minutes, begging him to wait until he had transacted a piece of business in the market held just outside the gate.
“Tell me before ye go, Ally, what may be the use of them three big hooks close to the gate,” said Flaggan, pointing upwards.