“Lord love you, Master,” says he, in very good English, but gasping for breath.  “Hold hard a moment, for I’ve a thing or two to say to you as is worth your hearing.”

So I, mightily surprised by these words, stop; and he seeing the alley quite empty and deserted, sits down on a doorstep, and I do likewise, both of us being spent with our exertions.

“Was that man you were talking with a little while back named Haroun?” asks he, when he could fetch his breath.  I nodded.

“Did he offer to take you and three others to Elche, aboard a craft called the White Moon?”

I nodded again, astonished at his information, for we had not discussed our design to-day, Haroun and I.

“Did he offer to carry you off in a boat to his craft from the rock on the mouth?”

Once more I nodded.

“Can you guess what will happen if you agree to this?”

Now I shook my head.

“The villain,” says he, “will run you on a shoal, and there will he be overhauled by the janizaries, and you be carried prisoners back to Alger.  Your freedom will be forfeited, and you will be sold for slaves.  And that’s not all,” adds he; “the lass you have with you will be taken from you and given to Mohand ou Mohand, who has laid this trap for your destruction and the gratification of his lust.”

I fell a-shaking only to think of this crowning calamity, and could only utter broken, unintelligible sounds to express my gratitude for this warning.

“Listen, Master, if you cannot speak,” said he; “for I must quit you in a few minutes, or get my soles thrashed when I return home.  What I have told you is true, as there is a God in heaven; ’twas overheard by my comrade, who is a slave in Mohand’s household.  If you escape this trap, you will fall in another, for there is no bounds to Mohand’s devilish cunning.  I say, if you stay here you are doomed to share our miserable lot, by one device or another.  But I will show you how you may turn the tables on this villain, and get to a Christian country ere you are a week older, if you have but one spark of courage amongst you.”

CHAPTER XL.

Of our escape from Barbary, of the pursuit and horrid, fearful slaughter that followed, together with other moving circumstances.

So Groves, as my man was named, told me how he and eight other poor Englishmen, sharing the same bagnio, had endured the hardships and misery of slavery, some for thirteen, and none less than seven, years; how for three years they had been working a secret tunnel by which they could escape from their bagnio (in which they were locked up every night at sundown) at any moment; how for six months, since the completion of their tunnel, they had been watching a favourable opportunity to seize a ship and make good their escape (seven of them being mariners); and how now they were, by tedious suspense, wrought to such a pitch of desperation that they were ripe for any means of winning their freedom.  “And here,” says he, in conclusion, “hath merciful Providence given us the power to save not only ourselves from this accursed bondage, but you, also, if you are minded to join us.”