Chapter Three.
The Bagnio—Our Hero sees something of Misery, and is sold as a Slave.
There are some things in this world so unbelievable that even when we know them to be true we still remain in a state of semi-scepticism.
When our unfortunate midshipman awoke next morning, raised himself on his elbow, and felt that all his bones and muscles were stiff and pained from lying on a stone floor, it was some time before he could make out where he was, or recall the events of the last few days. The first thing that revived his sluggish memory was the scuttling away, in anxious haste, of a scorpion that had sought and found comfortable quarters during the night under the lee of his right leg. Starting up, he crushed the reptile with his foot.
“You will get used to that,” said a quietly sarcastic voice with a slightly foreign accent, close to him.
The speaker was a middle-aged man with grey hair, hollow cheeks, and deep sunken eyes.
“They trouble us a little at first,” he continued, “but, as I have said, we get used to them. It is long since I cared for scorpions.”
“Have you, then, been long here?” asked Foster.
“Yes. Twelve years.”
“A prisoner?—a slave?” asked the midshipman anxiously.
“A prisoner, yes. A slave, yes—a mummified man; a dead thing with life enough to work, but not yet quite a brute, more’s the pity, for then I should not care! But here I have been for twelve years—long, long years! It has seemed to me an eternity.”
“It is a long time to be a slave. God help you, poor man!” exclaimed Foster.
“You will have to offer that prayer for yourself, young man,” returned the other; “you will need help more than I. At first we are fools, but time makes us wise. It even teaches Englishmen that they are not unconquerable.”
The man spoke pointedly and in a harsh sarcastic tone which tended to check Foster’s new-born compassion; nevertheless, he continued to address his fellow-sufferer in a sympathetic spirit.
“You are not an Englishman, I think,” he said, “though you speak our language well.”
“No, I am French, but my wife is English.”
“Your wife! Is she here also?”
“Thank God—no,” replied the Frenchman, with a sudden burst of seriousness which was evidently genuine. “She is in England, trying to make up the sum of my ransom. But she will never do it. She is poor. She has her daughter to provide for besides herself, and we have no friends. No, I have hoped for twelve years, and hope is now dead—nearly dead.”
The overwhelming thoughts that this information raised in Foster’s mind rendered him silent for a few minutes. The idea of the poor wife in England, toiling for twelve years almost hopelessly to ransom her husband, filled his susceptible heart with pity. Then the thought of his mother and Minnie—who were also poor—toiling for years to procure his ransom, filled him with oppressive dread. To throw the depressing subject off his mind, he asked how the Frenchman had guessed that he was an Englishman before he had heard him speak.
“I know your countrymen,” he answered, “by their bearing. Besides, you have been muttering in your sleep about ‘Mother and Minnie.’ If the latter is, as I suppose, your sweetheart—your fiancée—the sooner you get her out of your mind the better, for you will never see her more.”
Again Foster felt repelled by the harsh cynicism of the man, yet at the same time he felt strangely attracted to him, a fact which he showed more by his tones than his words when he said—
“My friend, you are not yet enrolled among the infallible prophets. Whether I shall ever again see those whom I love depends upon the will of God. But I don’t wonder that with your sad experience you should give way to despair. For myself, I will cling to the hope that God will deliver me, and I would advise you to do the same.”
“How many I have seen, who had the sanguine temperament, like yours, awakened and crushed,” returned the Frenchman. “See, there is one of them,” he added, pointing to a cell nearly opposite, in which a form was seen lying on its back, straight and motionless. “That young man was such another as you are when he first came here.”
“Is he dead?” asked the midshipman, with a look of pity.
“Yes—he died in the night while you slept. It was attending to him in his last moments that kept me awake. He was nothing to me but a fellow-slave and sufferer, but I was fond of him. He was hard to conquer, but they managed it at last, for they beat him to death.”
“Then they did not conquer him,” exclaimed Foster with a gush of indignant pity. “To beat a man to death is to murder, not to conquer. But you called him a young man. The corpse that lies there has thin grey hair and a wrinkled brow.”
“Nevertheless he was young—not more than twenty-seven—but six years of this life brought him to what you see. He might have lived longer, as I have, had he been submissive!”
Before Foster could reply, the grating of a rusty key in the door caused a movement as well as one or two sighs and groans among the slaves, for the keepers had come to summon them to work. The Frenchman rose and followed the others with a hook of sullen indifference. Most of them were without fetters, but a few strong young men wore chains and fetters more or less heavy, and Foster judged from this circumstance, as well as their expressions, that these were rebellious subjects whom it was difficult to tame.
Much to his surprise, the youth found that he was not called on to join his comrades in misfortune, but was left behind in solitude. While casting about in his mind as to what this could mean, he observed in a corner the two rolls of black bread which he had received the previous night, and which, not being hungry at the time, he had neglected. As a healthy appetite was by that time obtruding itself on his attention, he took hold of one and began to eat. It was not attractive, but, not being particular, he consumed it. He even took up the other and ate that also, after which he sighed and wished for more! As there was no more to be had, he went to the fountain in the court and washed his breakfast down with water.
About two hours later the door was again opened, and a man in the uniform of a janissary entered. Fixing a keen glance on the young captive, he bade him in broken English rise and follow.
By this time the lesson of submission had been sufficiently impressed on our hero to induce him to accord prompt obedience. He followed his guide into the street, where he walked along until they arrived at a square, on one side of which stood a large mosque. Here marketing was being carried on to a considerable extent, and, as he threaded his way through the various groups, he could not help being impressed with the extreme simplicity of the mode of procedure, for it seemed to him that all a man wanted to enable him to set himself up in trade was a few articles of any kind—old or new, it did not matter which—with a day’s lease of about four feet square of the market pavement. There the retail trader squatted, smoked his pipe, and calmly awaited the decrees of Fate!
One of these small traders he noted
