o their old prison the Bagnio, and loaded
them heavily with chains.

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Note 1. It is said that the treasure in Algiers about the end of that
century amounted to 4,000,000 pounds, most of which was paid by other
governments to purchase peace with the Algerines.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

IN WHICH DANGER LOOMS VERY DARK IN AND AROUND THE PIRATE CITY.

About this time four vessels entered the port of Algiers. One was a
French man-of-war with a British merchantman as a prize. The other was
an Algerine felucca with a Sicilian brig which she had captured along
with her crew of twenty men.

There were a number of men, women, and children on board the Frenchman's
prize, all of whom, when informed of the port into which they had been
taken, were thrown into a state of the utmost consternation, giving
themselves up for lost--doomed to slavery for the remainder of their
lives,--for the piratical character of the Algerines was well-known and
much dreaded in those days by all the maritime nations. Newspapers and
general knowledge, however, were not so prevalent then as now, and for a
thousand Englishmen of the uneducated classes who knew that the
Algerines were cruel pirates, probably not more than two or three were
aware of the fact that England paid tribute to Algiers, and was
represented at her Court by a consul. The crew of the prize, therefore,
were raised from the lowest depths of despair to the highest heights of
extravagant joy on hearing that they were free, and their gratitude knew
no bounds when the consul sent Ted Flaggan and Rais Ali to conduct them
from the Marina to his own town residence, where beds and board,
attendance and consolation, were hospitably provided for them. We might
add with truth that they were also provided with amusement, inasmuch as
Ted Flaggan allowed the effervescence of his sympathetic spirit and
wayward fancy to flow over in long discourses on Algerine piracy and
practice in general, in comparison with which the "Arabian Nights" is
tameness itself.

With the poor Sicilian captives, however, the case was very different,
for the felucca which brought them in brought also a report that the
Sicilian government had behaved very brutally to some Algerines whom
they had captured. The immediate result was that all the Sicilian
captives then in Algeria were ordered to be heavily ironed and put to
the severest work at