The Pirate City: An Algerine Tale. Robert Michael Ballantyne

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СКАЧАТЬ was a conceited coxcomb and a barefaced boaster, and ere long began to suspect that he was an arrant coward. He was, however, good-humoured and chatty, and Ted, being in these respects like-minded, rather took a fancy to him, and slily encouraged his weakness.

      “Ye must have seed a power o’ sarvice in the navy, now,” he said, with an air of interest; “how came you to git into it?”

      “Ha! that wos cos o’ me bein’ sitch a strong, good-lookin’ feller,” replied Ali, with an air of self-satisfaction.

      “Just so,” said Flaggan; “but it’s not common to hear of Moors bein’ taken aboard our men o’ war, d’ee see. It’s that as puzzles me.”

      “Oh, that’s easy to ’splain,” returned Ali. “The fac’ is, I’d bin for sev’l year aboord a Maltese trader ’tween Meddrainean an’ Liverp’l, and got so like a English tar you coodn’t tell the one fro’ the oder. Spok English, too, like natif.”

      “Ha!” exclaimed Ted, nodding his head gravely—“well?”

      “Well, one night w’en we was all sleeperin’ in port, in a ’ouse on shore, the press-gang comes round an’ nabs the whole of us. We fight like lions. I knock seven men down, one before the tother, ’cause of bein’ very strong, an’ had learn to spar a littil. You know how to spar?”

      “Well,” returned Ted, looking with a smile at his huge hands, “I can’t go for to say as I know much about the science of it, d’ee see; but I can use my fists after a fashion.”

      “Good,” continued the Moor. “Well, then, we fights till all our eyes is black, an’ all our noses is red, an’ some of our teeths is out, but the sailirs wos too many for us. We wos ’bleeged to gif in, for wot kin courage do agin numbers? so we wos took aboord a friggit and ’zamined.”

      “An’ what?” asked the seaman.

      “’Zamined. Overhauled,” replied the Moor.

      “Oh! examined, I see. Well?”

      “Well, I feels sure of git hoff, bein’ a Algerine Moor, so w’en my turn comes, I says to the hofficer wot ’zamined us, says I, ‘I’s not a Breetish man!’

      “‘Wot are you, then?’ says the hofficer.

      “‘I’s a Moor,’ says I.

      “‘Moor’s the pity,’ says he.”

      Ted gave a short laugh at this.

      “Now, that’s strange,” observed Ali, glancing at his companion in some surprise; “that’s ’zactly wot they all did, w’en the hofficer says that! I’ve thought oftin ’bout it since, but never could see wot they laugh at.”

      “Oh, it’s just a way we’ve got,” returned Flaggan, resuming his gravity; “the English have a knack o’ larfin’, off and on, w’en they shouldn’t ought to.—Git along with your yarn.”

      “Well, that wos the finish. I became a Breetish tar, an’ fouted in all the battils of the navy. I ’spected to get promotion an’ prize-money, but nivir git none, ’cause of circumstances as wos never ’splained to me. Well, one night we come in our friggit to anchor in bay of Algiers. I gits leave go ashore wi’ tothers, runs right away to our Dey, who gits awrful waxy, sends for Breetish cap’n, ’splain that I’s the son of a Turk by a Algerine moder an’ wery nigh or’er the cap’n’s head to be cutted off.”

      “You don’t say so?”

      “Yis, it’s troo. Wery near declare war with England acause of that,” said Ali, with an air of importance. “But the Breetish consul he interfere, goes down on hims knees, an’ beg the Dey for to parding hims nation.”

      “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.

      “Them’s for throwin’ down teeves an’ murderers on to.—You stay here; me not be wery long come back.”

      Rais Ali hurried away, leaving the sailor to observe and moralise on all that passed around him. And there was a good deal to induce thought in one who had been accustomed to comparatively humane laws and merciful dispensations in his native land, for, besides the scene which he had just witnessed, and the huge hooks whose uses had just been explained to him, he now noticed that several conspicuous places near him were garnished with the heads of malefactors who had been recently executed. He observed, also, that the innumerable donkeys which were being constantly driven past him, overladen with market produce, were covered with open sores, and that these sores appeared to be selected for special flagellation when the brutal drivers wished to urge the wretched creatures on.

      He stood thus for some time watching with interest the throng of Turks, Jews, Moors, negroes, and others that continually streamed to and fro, some on foot, some on horseback, and others, especially the men with marketable commodities, on mules and donkeys. It was not difficult for him to distinguish between the races, for Rais Ali had already told him that none but Turks were permitted СКАЧАТЬ