Читать книгу Pirate Princes and Yankee Jacks онлайн

25 страница из 30

He viewed the Americans with great resentment.

"I have sent several times to your nation," he said through his interpreter, a renegade Englishman, "offering to make peace with them if they would satisfy my requirements. They have never sent me a definite reply. Since they have treated me so disdainfully, I will never make peace with them! As for you, Christian dogs, you shall eat stones!"

The captives were driven from his presence and marched to the bagnio, or prison, where they joined six hundred Christian slaves of various nationalities—poor, broken-spirited fellows, weighed down with chains.

Their names were entered in the prison book; each of them was given a blanket, a scanty supply of coarse clothing, and a small loaf of black, sour bread. They slept on the floor, with a thin blanket between them and the cold stones.

The next day each of them had a chain weighing about forty pounds placed on him. One end was bound around the waist, and the other end was fastened by a ring about the ankle. They were then assigned various tasks for the government. The iron ring on their ankles, they learned, was the badge of public service. Though it was a cruel weight, it protected them from abuse by fanatical Moslems.