The Moor suggested that Captain Paddock dictate a letter to the British consul at Mogador, naming a ransom price of four hundred dollars each, which message could be sent on ahead of Ahamed, who might then await a reply before venturing into the city. The messenger galloped away on a spirited steed, but, alas! he soon came galloping back, having met a friend on the road who read the letter and swore that it would not do at all.
Captain Paddock was in the depths of despair when the friendly Moor came to the rescue with another plan. The American captain should be his own messenger into Mogador, with Ahamed and an escort to guard against escape, while the other sailors were held in the mountains as hostages.
This idea was favorably received, and after a wearisome journey Captain Judah Paddock rode into Mogador to find the British consul. When he entered the flat-roofed stone building above which flew the red cross of St. George, six or eight hearty-looking English sailors rushed forward to welcome him as a shipwrecked seamen. They were survivors of the Martin Hall, “and when I told them that three of their crew were with my party,” relates Captain Paddock, “their joy was loud and boisterous. One lusty son of Neptune ran to the consul’s door, shouting:
“‘Mr. Gwyn, Mr. Gwyn, an English captain is here from the Arab coast, and the Arabs with him!’”
The consul, an elderly man, hastened out in his shirt and breeches, for the hour was early in the morning, and to him Captain Paddock explained that he was really an American shipmaster whose only chance of rescue had been in calling himself an Englishman. Mr. Gwyn invited him to sit down to breakfast, and tactfully explained that there was supposed to be an American consular agent in Mogador, but the incumbent just then was a Genoese who spoke no English, and had been bundled aboard an outward-bound ship by command of the Emperor of Morocco, who had conceived a dislike for him. Mr. Gwyn went on to break the news that he had no funds with which to ransom captive sailors and that the nearest official resource would be the American consul-general at Tangier.
At this Ahamed was for dragging his slaves back to the desert, but the kindly Mr. Gwyn had no intention of permitting it, and he introduced Captain Paddock to a firm of British merchants, the brothers William and Alexander Court, who promptly offered to pay the amounts stipulated and to trust to the American government for repayment.
It then transpired that even after paying the price to the Arab tribes for the recovery of such shipwrecked waifs as these, it depended upon the whim and the pleasure of the Emperor of Morocco whether they should be allowed to go home from Barbary. He had been known to hold Christian wanderers as prisoners until it suited him to issue a special edict or passport of departure.
While dining at the house of a British resident in Mogador, Captain Paddock met a Jewish merchant recently returned from the Sahara coast who told a yarn which brought a gleam of humor into the bitter experience of the castaways. He had got wind of a shipwreck and posted off to the scene on the chance of a speculation. At the Oswego he found two or three hundred Arabs industriously despoiling the hulk of the ship. She had no cargo in her when she went ashore, being merely ballasted with Irish earth. The Arabs reasonably deduced that this stuff must be valuable or a ship would not be laden with it, and although they were unable to comprehend what it was, they thriftily proceeded to salvage every possible pound of it.
They requested the Jewish merchant to examine the treasure which had cost them much labor, as they had been compelled to dive for most of it. Every Arab had been carefully allotted his rightful share in order to prevent quarreling and bloodshed, and it was guarded in a little heap inside his tent. They were greatly mortified, the merchant recounted, when he laughed and told them the ballast was worth no more than the sand upon which they stood.
Ahamed returned to the mountain stronghold and fetched to Mogador the other mariners who were held as hostages awaiting the tidings of ransom. The little British lad called Jack had no desire to leave Barbary. He promptly ran away from Mr. Gwyn and the consulate and lived with Moorish friends in Mogador and even paraded an adopted father. Much distressed, Captain Paddock consulted the Moorish governor, who replied as follows: