higher sum than the
first; but the owners and equipage are only permitted to share the
former price, while, by a beautifully simple process, the whole
difference between the first and second sales goes absolutely to the
Government.

The Government slaves wear an iron ring on one ankle, and are locked
up at night in the bagnios, while by day they do all the heavy work of
the city, as cleaning, carrying, and quarrying stone. Their rations
are three loaves a day. Some have been seen to toil in chains. They
have nevertheless their privileges; they have no work to do on
Fridays, and they are at free liberty to play, work, or steal for
themselves every day for about three hours before sunset, and Morgan
adds that they do steal with the coolest impunity, and often sell the
stolen goods back to the owners, who dare not complain. Sometimes the
Dey sends them to sea, when they are allowed to retain part of the
spoil; and others are permitted to keep taverns for renegades and the
general riff-raff, both of Turks and Christians, to carouze in.
Sometimes they may save enough to re-purchase their freedom, but it
often happened that a slave remained a slave by preference, sooner
than return to Europe and be beggared, and many of them were certainly
better off in slavery at Algiers, where they got a blow for a crime,
than in Europe, where their ill-deeds would have brought them to the
wheel, or at least the halter.

There were undoubtedly instances, however, of unmitigated barbarity in
the treatment of prisoners. For example, the Redemptionists relate the
sufferings of four Knights of Malta--three of them French gentlemen,
and one from Lucca--who were taken captive at the siege of Oran in
1706, and taken to Algiers. Here they were thrust into the Government
prison, along with other prisoners and slaves, to the number of two
thousand. Faint with the stench, they were removed to the Kasaba or
Castle, where they remained two years. News was then brought that the
galleys of Malta had captured the _capitana_ or flagship of Algiers,
with six hundred and fifty Turks and Moors aboard, besides Christian
slaves, to say nothing of killed and wounded: whereupon, furiously
incensed, the Dey sent the imprisoned knights to the castle dungeon,
and loaded them with chains weighing 120 lbs.; and there they
remained, cramped with the irons, in a putrid cavern swarming with
rats and other vermin. They could hear the people passing in the
street withou