Mariano, who was impatient to return, at once darted away like a deer, and was soon lost to view among the aloes and cactuses that clothed the slopes of the Sahel hills.
Not long afterwards the grey light of day began to tip the domes and minarets of the pirate city, and with it began the soft hum of a general awakening—for Mohammedans are early risers, and even pirates deemed it consistent with their calling to commence the day with formal—not to say ostentatious—prayers. Any one traversing the streets at that early hour might have seen men at the fountains busy with their prescribed ablutions, while elsewhere others were standing, kneeling, or prostrating themselves, with their faces turned carefully in the direction of Mecca, their holy city.
It must not be supposed, however, as we have already remarked, that all the men of the town were pirates. That the town existed by means of piracy, and that all its chief men from the Dey downwards were pure and simple robbers, is quite consistent with the fact that there were many honest enough traders and workmen whose lot had been cast there, and whose prayers were probably very heartfelt and genuine—some of them, perchance, being an appeal for deliverance from the wretches who ruled them with a rod of iron—indeed, we might almost say, a rod of red-hot iron. Whatever the nature of their
