The son of Barbarossa was so cruel, and treated his slaves so badly,that, when those who were at the oars saw that the She-wolf galley wasbearing down upon them and gaining upon them, they all at once droppedtheir oars and seized their captain who stood on the stage at theend of the gangway shouting to them to row lustily; and passing him onfrom bench to bench, from the poop to the prow, they so bit him thatbefore he had got much past the mast his soul had already got to hell;so great, as I said, was the cruelty with which he treated them, andthe hatred with which they hated him.
We returned to Constantinople, and the following year,seventy-three, it became known that Don John had seized Tunis andtaken the kingdom from the Turks, and placed Muley Hamet inpossession, putting an end to the hopes which Muley Hamida, thecruelest and bravest Moor in the world, entertained of returning toreign there. The Grand Turk took the loss greatly to heart, and withthe cunning which all his race possess, he made peace with theVenetians （who were much more eager for it than he was）， and thefollowing year, seventy-four, he attacked the Goletta and the fortwhich Don John had left half built near Tunis. While all theseevents were occurring, I was labouring at the oar without any hopeof freedom; at least I had no hope of obtaining it by ransom, for Iwas firmly resolved not to write to my father telling him of mymisfortunes. At length the Goletta fell, and the fort fell, beforewhich places there were seventy-five thousand regular Turkishsoldiers, and more than four hundred thousand Moors and Arabs from allparts of Africa, and in the train of all this great host suchmunitions and engines of war, and so many pioneers that with theirhands they might have covered the Goletta and the fort with handfulsof earth. The first to fall was the Goletta, until then reckonedimpregnable, and it fell, not by any fault of its defenders, who didall that they could and should have done, but because experimentproved how easily entrenchments could be made in the desert sandthere; for water used to be found at two palms depth, while theTurks found none at two yards; and so by means of a quantity ofsandbags they raised their works so high that they commanded the wallsof the fort, sweeping them as if from a cavalier, so that no one wasable to make a stand or maintain the defence.
It was a common opinion that our men should not have shut themselvesup in the Goletta, but should have waited in the open at thelanding-place; but those who say so talk at random and with littleknowledge of such matters; for if in the Goletta and in the fort therewere barely seven thousand soldiers, how could such a small number,however resolute, sally out and hold their own against numbers likethose of the enemy? And how is it possible to help losing a strongholdthat is not relieved, above all when surrounded by a host ofdetermined enemies in their own country? But many thought, and Ithought so too, that it was special favour and mercy which Heavenshowed to Spain in permitting the destruction of that source andhiding place of mischief, that devourer, sponge, and moth of countlessmoney, fruitlessly wasted there to no other purpose save preservingthe memory of its capture by the invincible Charles V; as if to makethat eternal, as it is and will be, these stones were needed tosupport it. The fort also fell; but the Turks had to win it inch byinch, for the soldiers who defended it fought so gallantly and stoutlythat the number of the enemy killed in twenty-two general assaultsexceeded twenty-five thousand. Of three hundred that remained alivenot one was taken unwounded, a clear and manifest proof of theirgallantry and resolution, and how sturdily they had defendedthemselves and held their post. A small fort or tower which was in themiddle of the lagoon under the command of Don Juan Zanoguera, aValencian gentleman and a famous soldier, capitulated upon terms. Theytook prisoner Don Pedro Puertocarrero, commandant of the Goletta,who had done all in his power to defend his fortress, and took theloss of it so much to heart that he died of grief on the way toConstantinople, where they were carrying him a prisoner. They alsotook the commandant of the fort, Gabrio Cerbellon by name, aMilanese gentleman, a great engineer and a very brave soldier. Inthese two fortresses perished many persons of note, among whom wasPagano Doria, knight of the Order of St. John, a man of generousdisposition, as was shown by his extreme liberality to his brother,the famous John Andrea Doria; and what made his death the more sad wasthat he was slain by some Arabs to whom, seeing that the fort wasnow lost, he entrusted himself, and who offered to conduct him inthe disguise of a Moor to Tabarca, a small fort or station on thecoast held by the Genoese employed in the coral fishery. These Arabscut off his head and carried it to the commander of the Turkish fleet,who proved on them the truth of our Castilian proverb, that "thoughthe treason may please, the traitor is hated;" for they say he orderedthose who brought him the present to be hanged for not havingbrought him alive.
Among the Christians who were taken in the fort was one named DonPedro de Aguilar, a native of some place, I know not what, inAndalusia, who had been ensign in the fort, a soldier of greatrepute and rare intelligence, who had in particular a special gift forwhat they call poetry. I say so because his fate brought him to mygalley and to my bench, and made him a slave to the same master; andbefore we left the port this gentleman composed two sonnets by wayof epitaphs, one on the Goletta and the other on the fort; indeed, Imay as well repeat them, for I have them by heart, and I think theywill be liked rather than disliked.
The instant the captive mentioned the name of Don Pedro deAguilar, Don Fernando looked at his companions and they all threesmiled; and when he came to speak of the sonnets one of them said,"Before your worship proceeds any further I entreat you to tell mewhat became of that Don Pedro de Aguilar you have spoken of."
"All I know is," replied the captive, "that after having been inConstantinople two years, he escaped in the disguise of an Arnaut,in company with a Greek spy; but whether he regained his liberty ornot I cannot tell, though I fancy he did, because a year afterwardsI saw the Greek at Constantinople, though I was unable to ask him whatthe result of the journey was."
"Well then, you are right," returned the gentleman, "for that DonPedro is my brother, and he is now in our village in good health,rich, married, and with three children."
"Thanks be to God for all the mercies he has shown him," said thecaptive; "for to my mind there is no happiness on earth to comparewith recovering lost liberty."
"And what is more," said the gentleman, "I know the sonnets mybrother made."
"Then let your worship repeat them," said the captive, "for you willrecite them better than I can."
"With all my heart," said the gentleman; "that on the Goletta runsthus."
CHAPTER XL
IN WHICH THE STORY OF THE CAPTIVE IS CONTINUED.
SONNET
"Blest souls, that, from this mortal husk set free,
In guerdon of brave deeds beatified,
Above this lowly orb of ours abide
Made heirs of heaven and immortality,
With noble rage and ardour glowing ye
Your strength, while strength was yours, in battle plied,
And with your own blood and the foeman's dyed
The sandy soil and the encircling sea.
It was the ebbing life-blood first that failed
The weary arms; the stout hearts never quailed.
Though vanquished, yet ye earned the victor's crown:
Though mourned, yet still triumphant was your fall
For there ye won, between the sword and wall,
In Heaven glory and on earth renown."
"That is it exactly, according to my recollection," said thecaptive.
"Well then, that on the fort," said the gentleman, "if my memoryserves me, goes thus:
SONNET
"Up from this wasted soil, this shattered shell,
Whose walls and towers here in ruin lie,
Three thousand soldier souls took wing on high,
In the bright mansions of the blest to dwell.
The onslaught of the foeman to repel
By might of arm all vainly did they try,
And when at length 'twas left them but to die,
Wearied and few the last defenders fell.
And this same arid soil hath ever been
A haunt of countless mournful memories,
As well in our day as in days of yore.
But never yet to Heaven it sent, I ween,
From its hard bosom purer souls than these,
Or braver bodies on its surface bore."
The sonnets were not disliked, and the captive was rejoiced atthe tidings they gave him of his comrade, and continuing his tale,he went on to say:
The Goletta and the fort being thus in their hands, the Turks gaveorders to dismantle the Goletta- for the fort was reduced to such astate that there was nothing left to level- and to do the work morequickly and easily they mined it in three places; but nowhere werethey able to blow up the part which seemed to be the least strong,that is to say, the old walls, while all that remained standing of thenew fortifications that the Fratin had made came to the ground withthe greatest ease. Finally the fleet returned victorious andtriumphant to Constantinople, and a few months later died my master,El Uchali, otherwise Uchali Fartax, which means in Turkish "the scabbyrenegade;" for that he was; it is the practice with the Turks toname people from some defect or virtue they may possess; the reasonbeing that there are among them only four surnames belonging tofamilies tracing their descent from the Ottoman house, and the others,as I have said, take their names and surnames either from bodilyblemishes or moral qualities. This "scabby one" rowed at the oar asa slave of the Grand Signor's for fourteen years, and when overthirty-four years of age, in resentment at having been struck by aTurk while at the oar, turned renegade and renounced his faith inorder to be able to revenge himself; and such was his valour that,without owing his advancement to the base ways and means by which mostfavourites of the Grand Signor rise to power, he came to be king ofAlgiers, and afterwards general-on-sea, which is the third place oftrust in the realm. He was a Calabrian by birth, and a worthy manmorally, and he treated his slaves with great humanity. He had threethousand of them, and after his death they were divided, as hedirected by his will, between the Grand Signor （who is heir of all whodie and shares with the children of the deceased） and his renegades. Ifell to the lot of a Venetian renegade who, when a cabin boy onboard a ship, had been taken by Uchali and was so much beloved byhim that he became one of his most favoured youths. He came to bethe most cruel renegade I ever saw: his name was Hassan Aga, and hegrew very rich and became king of Algiers. With him I went therefrom Constantinople, rather glad to be so near Spain, not that Iintended to write to anyone about my unhappy lot, but to try iffortune would be kinder to me in Algiers than in Constantinople, whereI had attempted in a thousand ways to escape without ever finding afavourable time or chance; but in Algiers I resolved to seek for othermeans of effecting the purpose I cherished so dearly; for the hopeof obtaining my liberty never deserted me; and when in my plots andschemes and attempts the result did not answer my expectations,without giving way to despair I immediately began to look out for orconjure up some new hope to support me, however faint or feeble itmight be.