Across the Spanish Main - Harry Collingwood (best novels for beginners TXT) 📗

only a merchant-ship, we were not nearly so heavily armed as the corsair; and, our men being untrained in warfare, very few of our shot hit him, so that the rascal was but little the worse. Their captain then hailed us, and asked whether we would surrender; but the master of the Delight shouted back that if he wanted the ship he must come and take her.

“Whereat he came at us again, and laid himself alongside us, we not being able to move by this time, owing to our having lost all our masts, and being so encumbered with wreckage that we could do nothing. About a hundred fierce and bloodthirsty ruffians swarmed aboard us and began to cut us down and drive us toward the fore-part of the ship, while we, on our side, fought bravely enough with what weapons we could lay our hands on. But at last our gallant captain fell dead, cut down by the scimitar of a gigantic blackamoor, and the rest of us—very few by that time, I can assure you,—seeing this, threw down our arms and surrendered to the corsairs. There were then but seventeen of us left, all told, and not one of us but had his wound to show as the result of the fight. Five out of that seventeen, indeed, were so badly wounded that they died of their hurts before the corsair reached her port, leaving only twelve of us, all Englishmen, to be sent into slavery. After the corsairs had removed us to their own ship, they stripped the Delight of all that she carried, transferring all her cargo to their own hold. They were greatly pleased at the result of their day’s work—for they had made a good haul—and made all haste to return to their port, which was Tunis. But before bearing up they set fire to our ship, and when we last saw the Delight she was blazing merrily. I make no doubt that she sank shortly afterwards, leaving no trace behind.”

“You’m wrong there, mate,” broke in Jake Irwin. “Don’t you mind that it rained heavily soon afterwards? Well, the rain put out the fire, and an English ship comin’ up found her still smoulderin’, with enough of her left to show that she was the Delight. She brought the news of the loss of the Delight into Plymouth—I remember hearin’ all about it,—and it was thought she had took fire in the ordinary way, and that her crew, havin’ gone off in the boats, was a’terwards lost. No one ever gave a thought to pirates or corsairs.”

“Ah,” resumed Evans, “would to God that that vessel had come up sooner! We should have been saved—those left of us—from a living death that lasted for many years. Yes, now you come to mention it, I remember the rain; but we never dreamed that it would put out the fire, for we left her burning furiously. Well, the other ship was too late, and it makes no difference now. But, to get on with my yarn. We reached the port of Tunis about ten days later, and there was much joy there when it was found what a valuable cargo the corsair had brought back; and the joy was all the greater because of the twelve white prisoners, for white slaves are reckoned very valuable in those parts, and there hadn’t been any taken for a very long while. We were all put up to auction, and the man who bid highest got the man he fancied. A big Moor from the back-country took a liking for me, for I was a fine strapping youngster then, although you mightn’t think it to look at me now. Well, he bought me, but me only; so I said good-bye to my comrades, never expecting to see them again, and we set off with my master’s caravan for the interior.

“His home must have been some hundreds of miles in the interior, for it took us over two months of travelling every day to get there. We struck from the town of Tunis south-eastwards, as I could tell by the sun. After travelling for a long time we came to a big river, with fields of rice on each side of it, and beyond them the burning desert, with hills and mountains behind that again. When we came to the river we left the camels, and proceeded in boats until we came to a mighty waterfall, where we quitted the river for a time, and went a little way overland; then we took to the river again. This we did four times, and at last, after more than two months, travelling all the time, we came to a big town, built all of white stone, very fine to see. All around were green places like parks, with wells of good water in them; and there were palm-trees all about, and palaces of white marble; it was a lovely place for a free man to live in, but for a slave it was dreadful.

“Well, my masters, I was kept here for ten long years, during which I learnt the language, and found that the city in which I dwelt was named Khartoum. Then I began to fall ill; I looked old with suffering, and could not do the tasks allotted to me. I was whipped, and burnt with red-hot irons; but even such cruelties as these did not make me do any more work—for indeed I was more dead than alive,—so at last my master said he would send me down the river to the sea-coast, and sell me there as a galley-slave, as I was of no more use to him, while I should be made to work when I was in the galleys. So, with six others in like condition, I was sent off one morning, in charge of a guard, down the river, passing on our way six waterfalls or cataracts, as also many ruined temples and palaces of great age and beauty, with no men in them.

“After nearly two months of travelling, having passed many towns and villages on the way, we came one morning to a place on the river where we halted; and away in the desert I could see three great buildings, broad and square at the bottom, rising to a great height, and terminating in a point. I asked about them of our captors, and they told me that they were tombs of ancient kings of Egypt, and of great age.

“Leaving these, we went on again, and in course of time came to the city of Alexandria, where our journey ended. We stayed there several weeks, and then I—being by this time recovered from my sickness,—with the other six men, was sold to the captain of a corsair galley, who wanted a few more slaves to make up his complement of rowers.

“And now began the worst years of my life. For six long years, my masters, I sweated in a hot sun, with no shelter; toiling at the great heavy sweeps with the other slaves; always kept to our work by the whip of the bo’sun. Ah, the torment of those years! The recollection of them would never leave me, were I to live to the age of the patriarchs of old. We pursued other craft—mostly merchantmen—and took them; and those of the slaves who were killed by the shot of the other ships were replaced by their crews.

“Many a time did I pray that I should be one of those to find death; but it never came to me, though often enough to the men by my side. At last, one day we attacked a Spanish vessel—for we had gone down towards the Straits of Jebel-al-Tarik—that looked like a harmless merchant-ship, but she proved to be a war-ship disguised on purpose to take us, and others like us. After more than an hour’s fighting, during which nearly all our men were killed, she took us; and I, with the other Englishmen on board the galley, gave thanks to God, for we foolishly thought that all our troubles were now over. But we were soon to find out our mistake. There was now war between England and Spain, and we quickly discovered that we had merely made an exchange of masters.

“We were taken on board the Spaniard and the galley was sunk. Her owners were all hanged, being heathens, but we Englishmen were considered heretics, and we were to be reserved for the Holy Inquisition, that that office might convert us from our sins, and ‘save us from everlasting flame’, as the Spanish Dons put it. We were landed at Cartagena, in Spain, and I, with eight others, was thrown into prison, to await my trial at the hands of the Holy Office. One by one we were tried, and all found guilty of ‘heresy’. Then they asked if we would recant. We all refused, with the natural result that we were put to the torture. Oh, my masters, pray daily and nightly that you may never fall into the hands of the Holy Inquisition! Those years that I spent on the galley were as heaven compared to being in the hands of the Dons.

“I will not tell you how they tortured us—for indeed the story will not bear telling,—but I bear the marks of their irons and the rack to this day. My companions steadfastly refused to renounce their faith, and after enduring the most hideous and awful tortures they were burnt alive. I know not whether my tortures were worse than theirs, but at last I could bear them no longer, and I recanted, to gain release from my daily pain. But I was mistaken in supposing that this late conversion was going to save me. I was tortured again, for my past obstinacy, and then, instead of being released, I was sent to their galleys, to spend the remainder of my life therein. By turning Romanist I had indeed saved myself from burning, but not from that living hell, the life of a galley-slave.

“I was, then, sent to the galleys, and remained there, how long I know not, but it seemed to be several years. During the time that I was in the Spanish galley—for I remained on the same vessel all the time,—we, together with other vessels, made several attacks upon English ships, but we were beaten off with heavy loss in every case except one, and that was when we captured a small English merchantman called the Dainty, the unfortunate crew of which, I suppose, were put into the Inquisition, as I had been. These many conflicts were productive of heavy casualties among the slaves, many more, indeed, than among the soldiers and sailors who composed our fighting-crew, for, when chasing another vessel, or attacking her broadside to broadside, our enemy generally depressed his guns in order to hull and if possible sink us, as in that way only could they prevent us from running alongside. And every shot that pierced a galley’s hull was certain to kill or maim at least four or five slaves. But our masters cared nothing for that; when one crew of galley-slaves was exhausted, another batch was sent for to take their place. There were always plenty of slaves to be had from the Spanish prisons, and the men we got from them were an even more cruel and wicked set of rascals than the men who called themselves our masters.

“Well, I had been a galley-slave among the Spaniards for some years—how many years, exactly, I cannot tell you, for after a time my senses became so deadened that I could not take the trouble to count up and remember the days and weeks as they passed; indeed I became more like an animal than a human being. I had been with the Spaniards for several years, I say, when one day we sighted an English merchantman, as we thought, and chased her.