ime his object was to induce two Valencia merchants of Algiers to buy
an armed frigate, destined to carry Cervantes and a large number of
Christians back to Spain, but at the last minute they were again
betrayed, this time by a countryman, and again Cervantes took the blame
on his own shoulders, and confessed nothing to the Dey.

Now it seemed indeed as if his last moment had come. His hands were tied
behind him, and a cord was put round his neck; but Cervantes never
swerved from the tale he had resolved to tell, and at the close of the
interview found himself within the walls of a Moorish prison, where he
lay for five months loaded with fetters and chains, and treated with
every kind of severity, though never with actual cruelty.

All this time his mind was busy with a fresh scheme, nothing short of a
concerted insurrection of all the captives in Algiers, numbering about
25,000, who were to overpower the city, and to plant the Spanish flag on
its towers. His measures seem to have been taken with sufficient
prudence and foresight to give them a fair chance of success, bold as
the idea was, but treachery as usual caused the downfall of everything.
Why, under such repeated provocation, the cruel Azan Aga did not put him
to a frightful death it is hard to understand, but in his 'Captive's
Story,' Cervantes himself bears testimony to the comparative moderation
of the Dey's behaviour towards him. 'Though suffering,' he says,
'often, if not indeed always, from hunger and thirst, the worst of all
our miseries was the sight and sound of the tortures daily inflicted by
our master on our fellow-Christians. Every day he hanged one, impaled
another, cut off the ears of a third; and all this for so little reason,
or even for none at all, that the very Turks knew he did it for the mere
pleasure of doing it; and because to him cruelty was the natural
employment of mankind. Only one man did he use well, and that was a
Spanish soldier, named Saavedra, and though this Saavedra had struck
blows for liberty which will be remembered by Moors for many years to
come, yet Azan never either gave him stripes himself, nor ordered his
servants to do so, neither did he ever throw him an evil word; while we
trembled lest for the smallest of his offences the tyrant would have him
impaled, and more than once he himself expected it.' This
straightforward account of matters inside the bagnio is the more
valuable and interesting if we recollect that Cerv