Page:Ballantyne--The Pirate City.djvu/327

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THE PIRATE CITY.
305

probably not more than two or three were aware of the fact that England paid tribute to Algiers, and was represented at her Court by a consul. The crew of the prize, therefore, were raised from the lowest depths of despair to the highest heights of extravagant joy on hearing that they were free, and their gratitude knew no bounds when the consul sent Ted Flaggan and Rais Ali to conduct them from the Marina to his own town residence, where beds and board, attendance and consolation, were hospitably provided for them. We might add with truth that they were also provided with amusement, inasmuch as Ted Flaggan allowed the effervescence of his sympathetic spirit and wayward fancy to flow over in long discources on Algerine piracy and practice in general, in comparison with which the "Arabian Nights" is tameness itself.

With the poor Sicilian captives, however, the case was very different, for the felucca which brought them in brought also a report that the Sicilian government had behaved very brutally to some Algerines whom they had captured. The immediate result was that all the Sicilian captives then in Algeria were ordered to be heavily ironed and put to the severest work at the quarries and on the fortifications, while some of the most refractory among them were beaten to death, and others were