, in these days, can
hardly realise the dread in which those pirate vessels were held for
hundreds of years, and we find it difficult to believe that not a
century ago Christian captives were wearing out their lives in suffering
and exile, and the bitterness of hope deferred, in the Moorish
stronghold of Algiers.

And it seemed specially hard when a company of Spanish soldiers, who had
done great things in the sea fight at Lepanto, were attacked on their
homeward journey and carried captive by the very infidels they had so
lately conquered.

Arrived at the port of Algiers, the prisoners were awarded to different
masters, the poorer ones, from whose friends there was little hope of
ransom, being set to the hardest tasks and often cruelly ill-treated,
while those of higher rank had an easier service, unless, indeed, the
captors considered that the report of their sufferings might bring money
to redeem them. The only means of escape from slavery was to embrace the
Mohammedan religion, and the renegades who denied their faith often
became the most cruel persecutors of their countrymen.

There were two brothers among these Spanish soldiers, sons of a poor
though well-born gentleman of Alcara. The younger of these was to make
his name, Miguel de Cervantes, famous throughout the world. He had
distinguished himself in the wars, and had lost the use of his left hand
'for the greater glory of the right,' as he was wont to say in his
joking fashion. But a letter from his great leader, Don John of Austria,
which was found about him, convinced his captors that he was a person of
importance, and his ransom was fixed at a sum which he knew his father
could never pay. After a while, however, his family, by tremendous
efforts, scraped together a sum sufficient for the redemption of one
brother, and Roderigo, the elder, returned to Spain, Miguel remaining to
endure five years' captivity which would have broken any spirit less
gallant than his.

The captives dwelt in cells opening upon an oblong courtyard; they were
all Christians, and they had at least the comfort of their own services
held in one of the little chambers, which was set apart as a church.
'How good it is in this place to say "Our Father which art in Heaven,"'
Cervantes makes a little captive boy say in the drama in which he
afterwards describes his life in Algiers, and we can see there how the
suffering of the children went to the heart of the gallant soldier, who
enc