When the pirates fell in with any of these, a fierce engagement often took place, in which victory decided now for one side, now for the other. When the Christians obtained the mastery, they were sometimes content with plundering and sinking the enemy's vessel. The pirates were more refined in their cruelty, for, under similar circumstances, they converted their captives into beasts of burden, sold them publicly in the markets like cattle, or held and tortured them in chains, to hasten the ransoming of them by their friends.

Nor did these marauders confine their attacks to the merchants and mariners they encountered on the sea; frequently, when least expected, they made descents on the coasts of Sicily, sacked and burned the towns and villages, and carried away the inhabitants into servitude. For a long time, these calamities were confined to the southern parts of the island; but as experience rendered them bolder, the pirates penetrated northwards, swept round Messina and Palermo, and landed occasionally in the Lepari Islands, where they have left to this day very striking mementos of their visits for the towns and private dwellings are built at a distance from the sea on precipitous and almost inaccessible rocks, where nothing was to be dreaded but surprise, since a very small number of armed men could defend the passages leading to the towns and castles against a whole army.

Several Christian powers fitted out expeditions against Algiers, which was attacked by sea and land; but for ages without success. Spain made herself prominent in these irregular wars, and Charles V., having become formidable by his wars to all the powers of Europe, landed an army on the coast of Barbary, which melted away like snow before the terrible cavalry of the desert. Among the most redoubtable enemies of these corsair states, was that famous order of martial monks denominated the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, who, having been dislodged from the island of Rhodes, fortified themselves on the impregnable rock of Malta. Thence, before luxury had rendered them effeminate, they sallied forth against the hereditary foes of Christendom, attacked and captured their galleys, plundered and devastated their coasts, carried away their wives and daughters, and enriched themselves and all their dependents at their expense.

It may be worth while to glance at the sequel of the history of these bucaneering communities. As centuries rolled on, the light of the crescent began to pale. Sloth, ignorance, and barbarism seized upon the Oriental nations, while the states of the west sprang rapidly into opulence and power, especially upon the sea. Still, the existence of the pirates was winked at or tolerated; and the time through which this feeble policy prevailed, illustrates most strikingly the disinclination of modern governments to put down a long-established nuisance. So long as the Moors respected the flags of great and formidable states, they were suffered to

plunder with impunity the subjects of inferior governments. Hardened by the forbearance of Christendom, they at length ventured to attack the ships of England, and speedily received a chastisement, which proved the precursor of their ruin. A British squadron was despatched to Algiers, and poured its thunders into the city, until every building in it rocked to its foundations. The sky was red with flame, balls and shells fell upon the devoted Moslems like hail; and though the government was suffered to subsist a little longer, it never recovered from that blow. Fourteen years afterwards, France completed what Great Britain had begun; and at this moment, chasseurs de Vincennes, gendarmes, Parisian shopkeepers, Burgundian vine-dressers, and grisettes from all the cities of France, prance, and mince, and amble, where the bearded companions of Barbarossa divided the spoils of Europe by the light of their scimitars.

Such were the people among whom the renowned author of Don Quixote was destined to wear away several years in servitude. The service he had seen under Don Juan of Austria, by no means tended to diminish the prejudice with which he naturally regarded the Mohammedans. He had fought against them-he had lost one of his hands in the conflict; he had suffered hardship, and toil, and poverty, in the attempt to repress their inordinate ambition; and now he beheld himself at their mercy--a slave, and in chains. Yet to their power and their cruelty he resolved to oppose an invincible will; and his determination was supported and strengthened by the number of Christian captives who lamented his arrival, and by their sympathy and admiration augmented his heroic constancy.

To this period of his life, his memory through the entire remainder of it continually returned. It was one succession of toil, apprehension, and solicitude. He beheld around him numerous individuals raised to distinction through the abandonment of their religion; he witnessed perpetual attempts at escape, and knew that for this and other similar offences the punishment of impaling alive was frequently inflicted. He fell to the share of an Arnaout, whose name he has distorted into Dali Mami; and this piratical chief would at least appear to have rivalled any miscreant on the Barbary coast in cruelty and ferocity. The letters of recommendation of Don Juan of Austria, and the Duke de Sesa, which might have been productive of good fortune in Spain, were now converted into so many sources of calamity, for Dali Mami, imagining from their contents that Cervantes was a nobleman of the highest rank and distinction, treated him with extreme severity, in the hope of thus augmenting his desire of freedom, and the amount of his ransom. He was, accordingly, loaded with heavy irons, and kept in strict confinement.

Nearly all the events of this captivity are enveloped in obscurity. Things happen we know not how, and the most ingenious schemes

are defeated by means of which we obtain imperfect glimpses. For example, in spite of his chains and strict incarceration, we find Cervantes conferring with numbers of his countrymen, and corrupting a Moor, under whose guidance the whole party escapes from the city, and sets out towards Oran. The guide, we are told, was a habitual traitor, and on the very first day of their march deserted them. Abandoned by this miscreant, they were unable to prosecute their journey, and found themselves under the necessity of returning to Algiers, to encounter additional harshness in their masters, and a greater weight of chains. In one of his plays, entitled the Trato de Argel, Cervantes is supposed to describe some of the incidents of his first attempt at escape from captivity; but as he probably rather consulted his invention than his memory, it would hardly be safe to place any historical reliance on surmises of this kind. Shortly afterwards, several Spaniards, who had been his companions in misfortune, obtained their deliverance by ransom, and returned to their native country, when one of their number, Gabriel de Castaneda, represented to the father of Cervantes the sad condition of his sons in Algeria-for the two brothers were companions in misfortune. The father was evidently a man of a generous and affectionate disposition, and would appear to have been supported in his design by all the members of his family. He therefore sold the whole of his property, and even sacrificed the marriage-portions of his daughters, in order to redeem his two gallant sons from slavery. But the Moslem into whose hands Miguel had fallen, affected to believe him to be a noble of the first order, and rejected the proffered ransom with contempt. The master of his brother, Rodrigo, was less unreasonable. With the money forwarded by their father he therefore was liberated, and requested on his return home to send out an armed brigantine, to cruise along the coast of Algiers, a little to the east of the city, in order to co-operate with Cervantes in effecting the deliverance of himself and his companions.

It seems probable, that of the money placed in the hands of Cervantes for the ransom of himself and his brother, some considerable portion remained after the deliverance of the latter had been effected. This supposition is indeed necessary to account for the events which followed, since he had to put a complicated machinery in motion, and to engage several persons in his service, which he could not have done without gold.

A Greek renegade possessed, three miles east of the city, a garden reaching on one side down to the beach. The gardener was a Christian slave, who, partly through the sympathy of his faith, partly through the influence of dollars, consented to hazard impalement in the service of the captive Spaniards. Even with his assistance, it is difficult to comprehend how the plan of the author of Don Quixote could have been carried into execution. There existed, it appears, a spacious cavern in the garden, the entrance. to which was either unknown, or else the proprietor could not have

been in the habit of frequenting his own paradise. It may possibly have been one of those pieces of ground which, in the neighbourhood of Mohammedan cities, are laid out as market-gardens, and are rarely if ever visited by the gentlemen to whom they belong. They are contented if the produce is sold and the money safely lodged in their pocket. There is also another class of proprietors among the Moslems, who cultivate gardens in the vicinity of great towns. These men do not covet the value of the fruit and vegetables that may be grown on their grounds, but are simply desirous of possessing some wild and lonely retreat, to which they may betake themselves when oppressed by melancholy or misfortune, when their wives are cross or their friends unfaithful. With a bag of tobacco, a pipe, and a slave, they repair in the dead of night to their secluded gardens, where, stretched on their prayer-carpets, they smoke and meditate till dawn, after which they retire to their houses, to sleep away the troublesome hours of day.

For some such purpose, Dali Mami may have kept the garden referred to in the biography of Cervantes, though the existence of the cave must have been absolutely unknown to him, otherwise it would have been the very place he would have selected for his nocturnal fumigations. But whatever decisions we may come to on this point, we must admit the existence of the garden and of the cavern, in which a whole company of runaway captives concealed themselves from the month of February 1577 to the month of September in the same year, supported all the while by the liberality or ingenuity of the ingenious hidalgo, who afterwards celebrated the everlasting wallet of Sancho Panza, which always, like Fortunatus's purse, appeared to contain crust and onions with whatever else its owner desired to take out of it.

When he considered his scheme matured, Cervantes himself escaped from his master, and joined his friends in the cave, where they suffered much from damp and cold, although they were cheered and enabled to endure by the hope of liberty. In the month of September, the brigantine he expected set sail from the coast of Valencia, and traversed the Mediterranean to Algiers. Here the captain cruised about as he was directed, and at length seized on what he considered a favourable opportunity to put off a wellmanned boat towards the garden.

But the hopes of the unfortunate men were doomed to be frustrated. A galley filled with Moors happening just then to pass by, detected the movements of the Spaniards, several of whom, in the hurry and bustle of the moment, would appear to have been drowned. The project of Cervantes, however, was not by this means discovered; but one of his own countrymen, called El Dorador, in whom he had until then confided, determined at once to abandon his honour and his religion. This miscreant proceeded to the palace of the dey, and disclosed to him the enterprises and hopes of Cervantes. In consequence of this information, a body

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of soldiers, partly horse and partly foot, were sent to surprise the Christians in the cavern; and making their appearance suddenly in overwhelming force, were enabled to effect their purpose without difficulty or bloodshed.

When Cervantes observed the Moslem soldiers putting chains on his companions, he gallantly stood forward, and declared them to be innocent of all knowledge of his purpose, which he alone, he said, had contrived and sought to execute. This procured him the admiration, though not the sympathy of the dey, a cruel tyrant, who through avarice seized on all the prisoners, and appropriated them to himself.

It would be tedious to prolong the narrative of Cervantes's captivity and attempts at escape. The greatest interest was felt in his fate, both among the reverend Fathers of Redemption in Algiers, and his own friends and relatives in Spain, by whose indefatigable exertions the sum necessary for his ransom was at length raised, and towards the end of the year 1580 he obtained his liberty, and set sail for Spain.

Cervantes now experienced the emptiness and vanity of most of the hopes and expectations we form in this world. He had served his country gallantly as a soldier during many years; he had shared in some of the greatest battles and victories of Christendom; he had fallen by accident into captivity; but while suffering the deepest misfortunes himself, had found the means and opportunity of conferring eternal obligations on some of the noblest families in Spain. It was not, therefore, without reason that, as he returned home, he amused himself with building magnificent castles in the air. He was thoroughly persuaded that the foremost among the grandees would hasten to welcome him to Madrid ; that the courtiers would prove his enthusiastic friends; and that even the monarch himself would be eager to express to him, by honours and places of emolument, his appreciation of his high merits.

Upon his return, he found Philip II. engaged in the conquest of Portugal, and at the same time oppressed by the influence of recent sickness and sorrow. Had it been otherwise with the monarch, Cervantes's reception would have been still the same. Philip was too selfish and gloomy a tyrant to interest himself in the fortunes of a brave man, who had nothing but his genius and his virtues to recommend him., Finding no other course open to him, Cervantes once more entered the army, and proceeded with his old regiment to the subjugation of the Portuguese. He again distinguished himself by land and sea; was present at the battle of Terceira, and excited in all who witnessed his career the strongest possible admiration of his enthusiasm and valour.

But he was not a grandee; and in the service of Spain, as well as of some other countries, he who has influence at court may easily eclipse the possessor of all the genius and virtues under heaven.