d enough
to give them the strength necessary for their work, and that was all,
and the knowledge that they were exerting themselves for the downfall of
their fellow-Christians, often of their fellow-countrymen, must have
made their labour a toil indeed. Often it happened that a man's courage
gave way and he denied his faith and his country, and rose to great
honours in the service of the Sultan, the chief of the little kings who
swarmed on the African coasts. The records of the Corsairs bristle with
examples of these successful renegades, many of them captured as boys,
who were careless under what flag they served, as long as their lives
were lives of adventure.

All the captives were not, however, turned into galley slaves. Some were
taken to the towns and kept in prisons called _bagnios_, waiting till
their friends sent money to redeem them. If this was delayed, they were
set to public works, and treated with great severity, so that their
letters imploring deliverance might become yet more urgent. The others,
known as the king's captives, whose ransom might be promptly expected,
did no work and were kept apart from the rest.

It was on September 26, 1575, that Miguel Cervantes, the future author
of 'Don Quixote,' fell into the hands of a Greek renegade Dali Mami by
name, captain of a galley of twenty-two banks of oars. Cervantes, the
son of a poor but well-descended gentleman of Castile, had served with
great distinction under Don John of Austria at the battle of Lepanto
four years earlier, and was now returning with his brother Rodrigo to
Spain on leave, bearing with him letters from the commander-in-chief,
Don John, the Duke of Sesa, Viceroy of Sicily, and other distinguished
men, testifying to his qualities as a soldier, 'as valiant as he was
unlucky,' and recommending Philip II. to give him the command of a
Spanish company then being formed for Italian service. But all these
honours proved his bane. The Spanish squadron had not sailed many days
from Naples when it encountered a Corsair fleet, and after a sharp fight
Cervantes and his friends were carried captive into Algiers.

Of course the first thing done was to examine each man as to his
position in life, and the amount of ransom he might be expected to
bring, and the letters found upon Miguel Cervantes impressed them with
the notion that he was a person of consequence, and capable of
furnishing a large sum of money. They therefore took every means of
ensuri