Part 3 (1/2)
”That the man with the proboscis, who struts when he walks, and snivels when he speaks, desires a favour of your highness.”
”Speak not in riddles,” returned the Dey sharply. ”I have no time to waste with thee to-day. Say thy say and be gone.”
Hadji Baba, who was indeed thoroughly alive to his own interest, was much too prudent to thwart the humour of his master. Briefly, though without changing his tone or manner, he informed him that the Spanish consul awaited his pleasure below.
”Let him wait,” said the Dey, resuming the pipe which for some minutes he had laid aside, and caressing the lion's head with the other hand.
”May I venture to say that he seems anxious?” added the story-teller.
”How much did he give thee for thus venturing to interrupt me, at the risk of thy head?” demanded the Dey sternly.
”Truly,” replied the jester, with a rueful air, ”not much more than would buy gold thread to sew my head on again, were your highness pleased to honour me by cutting it off.”
”Be gone, caitiff,” said the Dey, with a slight smile.
Baba vanished without further reply.
Meanwhile Sidi Omar left the palace and directed his steps to his own quarters, which stood on the little fortified island in front of Algiers. This islet, having been connected with the mainland by a pier or neck of masonry about a hundred yards long, formed the insignificant harbour which gave shelter to the navy of small craft owned by the pirates. At the present day the French have constructed there a magnificent harbour, of which that now referred to is a mere corner in the vicinity of the old light-house. Although small, the port was well fortified, and as the Minister of Marine descended towards it, his eye glanced with approval over the double and treble tiers of guns which frowned from its seaward battlements. In pa.s.sing over the connecting pier, Sidi Omar paused to observe a gang of slaves at work repairing some of the buildings which covered the pier stretching from the mainland to the island.
Although slaves, they were not of the black colour or thick-lipped, flat-nosed aspect which we are apt to a.s.sociate with the name of slave.
They were, indeed, burnt to the deepest brown, and many of them also blistered, by the sun, but they were all ”white men,” and contemptuously styled, by their Mohammedan task-masters, Christians. The pier on which they wrought had been constructed long before by thirty thousand such slaves; and the Algerine pirates, for above three centuries previous to that, had expended the lives of hundreds of thousands of them in the building of their fortifications and other public works; in the cultivation of their fields and gardens, and in the labours of their domestic drudgery.
Some of the slaves thus observed by the Minister of Marine had been sailors and merchants and mechanics, military and naval officers, clerks, scholars, and other gentlefolks from Italy, Portugal, America, and all the lands which chanced to be ”at war” with his highness the Dey. Formerly there had been hosts of English, French, Spanish, etcetera, but their governments having bowed their heads, opened their purses, and sent consuls to the piratical city, they were now graciously exempted from thraldom. It was hardish work for men accustomed to cooler climates to be obliged, in the suns.h.i.+ne of an African summer, to harness themselves to carts like oxen, and lift huge stones and hods of mortar with little more than a ragged s.h.i.+rt and trousers to cover them from the furnace-heat of day or the dews of night. Men who carry umbrellas and wear puggeries now-a-days on the Boulevard de la Republique of Algiers have but a faint conception of what some of their forefathers endured down at the ”Marina” not much more than fifty years ago, and of what they themselves could endure, perhaps, if fairly tried!
It must not be supposed, however, that all the slaves stood the trial equally well. Some were old, others were young; some were feeble, others strong; all were more or less worn--some terribly so.
Yonder old man carrying the block of stone which might tax the energies of a stout youth, and to whom a taskmaster has just administered a cut with the driving-whip, looks like one who has seen better days. Even in his ragged s.h.i.+rt, broken-brimmed straw hat, and naked feet, he looks like a gentleman. So he is; and there is a gentle lady and a stout son, and two sweet daughters, in Naples, who are toiling almost as hard as he does--if hours be allowed to count for pains--in order to make up his ransom. The strong bull-necked man that follows him with a hod of mortar is an unmistakable seaman of one of the Mediterranean ports. He is a desperate character, and in other lands might be dangerous; but he is safe enough here, for the bastinado is a terrible instrument of torture, and the man is now not only desperate in wrath, but is sometimes desperately frightened. His driver takes a fiendish pleasure in giving him an extra cut of the whip, just to make him apparently a willing horse, whether he will or not. The poor youth beside him is a very different character. His training has been more gentle, and his const.i.tution less robust, for he has broken down under the cruel toil, and is evidently in the last stages of consumption. The taskmaster does not now interfere with him as he was wont to do when he first arrived.
He knows that the day is not far distant when neither the bastinado nor any other species of torture will have power to force work out of him.
He also knows that overdriving will only shorten the days of his usefulness; he therefore wisely lets him stagger by unmolested, with his light load.
But why go on enumerating the sorrows of these slaves? Sidi Omar looked at them with a careless glance, until he suddenly caught sight of something that caused his eyes to flash and his brows to contract. A sbirro, or officer of justice, stood near him, whether by chance or otherwise we know not. Touching the sbirro on the shoulder, he pointed to a group under the shade of an archway, and said in a low tone--
”Go, fetch hither that scoundrel Blindi.”
The sbirro at once stepped towards the group, which consisted of two persons. One was an old, apparently dying, slave; the other was a strong middle-aged man, in a quaint blue gown, who knelt by his side, and poured something from a flask into his mouth.
The sbirro seized this man rudely by the neck, and said--
”Get up, Blindi, and come along with me.” Laying the head of the old man gently on the ground, and rising with some wrath, Blindi demanded, in English so broken that we find difficulty in mending it sufficiently to be presented to the reader--
”Wot for you means by dat?”
”Speak your mother tongue, you dog, and make haste, for the Minister of Marine wants you.”
”Oh! mos' awfrul,” exclaimed Blindi, turning pale, and drawing his blue garment hastily round him, as he meekly followed the officer of justice--whose chief office, by the way, was to administer injustice.
The man whom we have styled Blindi was a somewhat peculiar character.