ouraged many a tempted little one to hold firm to his faith. And now
and then a strange sight would be seen in the prisoners' quarters,
nothing less than a play in rhyme acted by some of the captives, and
stage-managed (as we should call it) by Cervantes, who had invented this
device to turn the thoughts of his companions for a little while from
the miseries of their lot.

But this high-spirited prisoner was not content with merely enlivening
his own and his friends' captivity--day and night that active brain of
his was plotting escape. One attempt to get away by land failed at once,
but with him a failure only meant a fresh start, and he was soon at work
again with those bold enough to join him. A slave named Juan, gardener
to Hassan Pasha, the Viceroy of Algiers, was induced to contrive a
hiding-place in his master's grounds where any of the captives who could
contrive to escape so far might conceal themselves until the arrival of
a friendly boat on the coast. A cave was hollowed out, all unsuspected
by the owner of the garden, large enough to contain fourteen men, and
thither one after another of the Christian slaves contrived to make his
way. From February to September fugitives were hiding there, fed by
stealth by the contrivance of Cervantes, who succeeded in sending
information to some of the vessels visiting the port either with
merchandise or to treat for the ransom of prisoners.

All had been carefully arranged for the escape, the hour was almost
come, when some one proved false: the story leaked out. The prisoners in
Hassan's garden, so near, as they believed, to the end of their long
waiting, were startled by footsteps and voices breaking the stillness of
the warm African night; lights flashed at the mouth of the cave, and
with shouts of triumph and threats of horrible penalties the luckless
fugitives were dragged forth. But one man stood forward in front of the
trembling, despairing group.

'I am the author of the scheme,' cried Cervantes, 'I devised it, I
carried it out; on me be the blame; take me before Hassan.'

So before Hassan the intrepid soldier was dragged, heavily manacled and
with a halter about his neck. He faced the Viceroy, who was a renegade
and a bloodthirsty tyrant, with the same cool, smiling courage with
which in the Gulf of Lepanto he had faced the Turkish guns. Once more he
repeated his statement that the whole scheme was his; his comrades had
but followed his lead, and the penalty w