A Brave Dash for Life and Freedom.
“Geo’ge, come wid me,” said Peter the Great one afternoon, with face so solemn that the heart of the young midshipman beat faster as he followed his friend.
They were in Ben-Ahmed’s garden at the time—for the middy had been returned to his owner after a night in the common prison, and a threat of much severer treatment if he should ever again venture to lay his infidel hands on one of the faithful.
Having led the middy to the familiar summer house, where most of their earnest or important confabulations were held, Peter sat down and groaned.
“What’s wrong now?” asked the middy, with anxious looks.
“Oh! Geo’ge, eberyt’ing’s wrong,” he replied, flinging himself down on a rustic seat with a reckless air and rolling his eyes horribly. “Eberyt’ing’s wrong. De world’s all wrong togidder—upside down and inside out.”
The middy might have laughed at Peter’s expression if he had not been terribly alarmed.
“Come, Peter, tell me. Is Hester safe?”
“I don’ know, Geo’ge.”
“Don’t know! Why d’you keep me in such anxiety? Speak, man, speak! What has happened?”
“How kin I speak, Geo’ge, w’en I’s a’most busted wid runnin’ out here to tell you?”
The perspiration that stood on Peter’s sable brow, and the heaving of his mighty chest, told eloquently of the pace at which he had been running.
“Dis is de way ob it, Geo’ge. I had it all fro’ de lips ob Sally herself, what saw de whole t’ing.” As the narrative which Peter the Great had to tell is rather too long to be related in his own “lingo,” we will set it down in ordinary language.
One day while Hester was, as usual, passing her father, and in the very act of dropping the customary supply of food, she observed that one of the slaves had drawn near and was watching her with keen interest. From the slave’s garb and bearing any one at all acquainted with England could have seen at a glance that he was a British seaman, though hard service and severe treatment, with partial starvation, had changed him much. He was in truth the stout sailor-like man who had spoken a few words to Foster the day he landed in Algiers, and who had contemptuously asserted his utter ignorance of gardening.
The slaves, we need hardly say, were not permitted to hold intercourse with each other for fear of their combining to form plans of rebellion and escape, but it was beyond the power of their drivers to be perpetually on the alert, so that sometimes they did manage to exchange a word or two without being observed.
That afternoon it chanced that Sommers had to carry a stone to a certain part of the wall. It was too heavy for one man to lift, the sailor was therefore ordered to help him. While bearing the burden towards the wall, the following whispered conversation took place.
“I say, old man,” observed the sailor, “the little girl that gives you biscuits every day is no more a nigger than I am.”
“Right!” whispered the merchant anxiously, for he had supposed that no one had observed the daily gift; “she is my daughter.”
“I guessed as much by the cut o’ your jibs. But she’s in danger, for I noticed that one o’ the drivers looked at her suspiciously to-day, and once suspicion is roused the villains never rest. Is there no means of preventing her coming this way to-morrow?”
“None. I don’t even know where she comes from or goes to. God help her! If suspected, she is lost, for she will be sure to come to-morrow.”
“Don’t break down, old man; they’ll observe you. If she is taken are you willing to fight?”
“Yes,” answered the merchant sternly.
“I am with you, then. Your name?”
“Sommers. Yours?”
“Brown.”
A driver had been coming towards them, so that the last few words had been spoken in low whispers. A sharp cut of the whip on the shoulders of each showed that the driver had observed them talking. They received it in absolute silence and without any outward display of feeling. To that extent, at all events, they had both been “tamed.”
But the stout seaman had been for many weeks acting a part. At first, like Sommers, he had been put in heavy irons on account of his violence and ferocity; but after many weeks of childlike submission on his part, the irons were removed. Despite the vigilance of the guards, a plot had been hatched by the gang to which Brown belonged, and it was almost, though not quite, ripe for execution when the events we are describing occurred. Poor Hester’s action next day precipitated matters and caused the failure of the plot—at least to some extent.
She had gone as usual with Sally to visit the slave-gang, and had dropped her biscuits, when her anxious father said, in a low but hurried voice, “Pass quickly, and don’t come again for some time!”
Hester involuntarily stopped.
“Darling father!” she said, restraining herself with difficulty from leaping into his arms, “why—oh! why am I not—”
She had only got thus far when the janissary, whose suspicions had been aroused, pounced upon her, and, seizing her by the wrist, looked keenly into her face.
“Ho! ho!” he exclaimed, glancing from the girl to her sire, “what mystery have we here? Come, we must investigate this.”
Poor Hester winced from the pain of the rude soldier’s grip as he proceeded to drag her away. Her father, seeing that further concealment was impossible, and that final separation was inevitable, became desperate. With the bound of an enraged tiger he sprang on the soldier and throttled him. Both being powerful men they fell on the ground in a deadly struggle, at which sight Hester could only look on with clasped hands in helpless terror.
But the British seaman was at hand. He had feared that some such mischief would arise. Seeing that two other soldiers were running to the aid of their fallen comrade, he suddenly gave the signal for the revolt of the slaves. It was premature. Taken by surprise, the half-hearted among the conspirators paid no attention to it, while the timid stood more or less bewildered. Only a few of the resolute and reckless obeyed the call, but these furnished full employment for their guards, for, knowing that failure meant death, if not worse, they fought like fiends.
Meanwhile the first of the two soldiers who came running, sword in hand, towards Sommers, was met by Brown. With a piece of wood in his left hand, that worthy parried the blow that was delivered at his head. At the same time he sent his right fist into the countenance of his adversary with such force that he became limp and dropped like an empty topcoat. This was fortunate, for the companion janissary was close to him when he wheeled round. The blazing look of the seaman, however, induced so much caution in the Turk that, instead of using his sword, he drew a long pistol from his girdle and levelled it. Brown leaped upon him, caught the pistol as it exploded just in time to turn the muzzle aside, wrenched the weapon from his foe’s grasp, and brought the butt of it down with such a whack on his head that it laid him beside his comrade.
Turning quickly to the still struggling pair, he saw that the janissary was black in the face, and that Sommers was compressing his throat with both hands and had his knee on his stomach, while Hester and Sally were looking on horrified, but hopeful. At the same time he saw fresh soldiers running up the street to reinforce the guard.
“Hester,” he said sharply, and seizing the girl’s hand, “come, bolt with me. I’ve knowed your father a good while. Quick!”
“Impossible!” she cried, drawing back. “I will not leave my father now!”
“You’ll have to leave him anyhow,” cried the sailor. “You can do him no good. If free you might—”
A shout at the moment caused him to glance round. It proceeded both from slaves and guards, for both at the same moment caught sight of the approach of the reinforcements. The former scattered in all directions, and the latter gave chase, while pistol-shots and yells rent the air.
Instead of wasting more breath in useless entreaty, Brown seized the light form of Hester in his arms and ran with her to the ramparts. In the confusion of the general skirmish he was not observed—or, if observed, unheeded—by any one but Sally, who followed him in anxious haste, thinking that the man was mad, for there could be no possible way of escape, she thought, in that direction. She was wrong. There was method in Brown’s madness. He had for a long time previously studied all the possibilities with reference to the meditated uprising, and had laid down for himself several courses which he might pursue according to the success, failure, or partial failure of their plans.
There was one part of the rampart they were engaged in repairing at that time which had given way and partly fallen into the ditch outside. The portion of the wall still remaining had been further demolished in order that a more secure foundation might be laid. The broken wall here had been but partially rebuilt, and was ............