Page:Ballantyne--The Pirate City.djvu/395

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THE PIRATE CITY.
373

leas, an' was built by a slave—a poor feller of a Genoese—an', would you belave it, they kilt him for the shape he gave it! Ab, they're a bad lot intirely! like a dacent Christian, he made it in the shape o' a cross, an' whin the Dey found that out he chopped the poor man's head off—so he did, worse luck! but it's that they're always doin', or stranglin' ye wid a bowstring, or makin' calf's-futt jelly o' yer soles.—What! 'ye don't belave it'? Faix, if ye go ashore ye'll larn to belave it. I've seed poor owld women git the bastinado—that's what they calls it—for nothin' at all a'most. Ah, they're awful hard on the women. They kape 'em locked up, they does, as if they was thieves or murderers, and niver lets 'em out—at least the ladies among 'em—for fear o' their bein' runned away wid. It's true what I'm sayin'. An' if wan shud be runned away wid, an' cotched, they ties her in a sack and drowns her.—Good-lookin', is it? Faix, that's more than I can tell 'ee, for all the time I've been in the place I've never wance seed a Moorish woman's face, barrin' the brow an' eyes and top o' the nose, for they cover 'em up wid white veils, so as to make 'em look like ghosts or walkin' corpses. But the Jewesses show their purty faces, an' so do the naigresses.—'Are the naigresses purty?' Troth, they may be to their own kith an' kin, but of all the ugly— Well, well, as you say, it's not fair to be