“That is a rare good fellow you have got there, that black with the curious hair,” the latter said.  “What is the man?  I never saw one like him.”

“He is a Christian,” one of the overseers said.  “He was smuggled into the town and sold to Ben Ibyn the Berber, who, to conceal the matter, dyed him black; but it got to the ears of the sultan, and he had him taken from the Berber, and brought here; I have no doubt the merchant has been squeezed rarely.”

“Well, that is a good fellow to work,” the other said.  “He has just moved a stone, single handed, that it would have taken half a dozen of the others to lift.  I wish you would put him regularly on this job; any one will do to sweep the streets; but a fellow like that will be of real use here, especially when the wall rises a bit higher.”

“It makes no difference to me,” the overseer said.  “I will give orders when I go down that he shall be always sent up with whichever gang comes here.”

The head mason, who was the chief official of the work, soon saw that Gervaise not only possessed strength, but knowledge of the manner in which the work should be done.

Accustomed as he had been to direct the slaves at work on the fortifications at Rhodes, he had learned the best methods of moving massive stones, and setting them in the places that they were to occupy.  At the end of the day the head mason told one of the slaves who spoke Italian to inquire of Gervaise whether he had ever been employed on such work before.  Gervaise replied that he had been engaged in the construction of large buildings.

“I thought so,” the officer said to the overseer; “the way he uses his lever shows that he knows what he is doing.  Most of the slaves are worth nothing; but I can see that this fellow will prove a treasure to us.”

Gervaise returned to the prison well satisfied with his day’s work.  The labour, hard though it was, was an absolute pleasure to him.  There was, moreover, nothing degrading in it, and while the overseers had plied their whips freely on the backs of many of his companions, he had not only escaped, but had, he felt, succeeded in pleasing his masters.  The next morning when the gangs were drawn up in the yard before starting for work, he was surprised at being ordered to leave the one to which he belonged and to fall in with another, and was greatly pleased when he found that this took its way to the spot at which they were at work on the previous day.

At the end of the week, when the work of the day was finished, the head mason came down to the prison and spoke to the governor; a few minutes afterwards Gervaise was called out.  The governor was standing in the courtyard with an interpreter.

“This officer tells me that you are skilled in masonry,” the governor said, “and has desired that you shall be appointed overseer of the gang whose duty it is to move the stones, saying he is sure that with half the slaves now employed you would get as much work done as at present.  Have you anything to say?”